


How to See Lexington, Kentucky on Twenty Dollars A Day

by breathedout



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Blowjobs, Casual Sex, Casual alcohol use and overuse, Childhood discussions, Coming Untouched, Complementarity, Dance Contests, Feelings Porn, Foot Fetish, Foot Massage, For Science!, Friends With Benefits, Frottage, Inadvertent property destruction, M/M, Mild poking of fun at the cultural hegemony of Christianity, Mildly Unsafe Sex, Mutually amicable breakups are still hard, Only one room at the inn, Passing allusions to the existence of systemic racism homophobia and fatphobia, Porn Porn, Prickly Strangers to, Semi-Erotic Bible-Themed Miniature Golf, Stranded in Middle America, This entire story is an excuse for, Walks In The Woods, Zany hijinx, curse magic, luck magic, not really romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:08:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21661945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathedout/pseuds/breathedout
Summary: It's not just the hangover, or his fiancée leaving him the literal day before the California vacation they'd planned together: Penny Adiyodi is legitimately cursed. Magically; metaphysically; possibly demonically: the whole deal. He has been his entire life, so there's no point in fighting it: least of all when sitting next to a weirdly entitled stranger on a packed cross-country flight, two days before a culturally compulsory holiday he doesn't even celebrate. But when the plane is grounded in Lexington, Kentucky, and Penny's seat-mate, Frankie Gallo, is somehow able to effortlessly secure the two of them the last hotel room in town, Penny starts to think something even stranger than usual is going on. Strange enough to suck it up and endure the dude's presence for a night, anyway—just to see what he's about.And honestly, the more time Penny spends holed up with Frankie in suburban Lexington, the stranger it gets. But Penny has to admit it also gets more interesting. And better, too, actually. A lot better. So there's that.
Relationships: Penny Adiyodi/Frankie Gallo, past Penny Adiyodi/Julia Wicker
Comments: 16
Kudos: 28
Collections: Magicians Hallmark Holiday Extravaganza





	How to See Lexington, Kentucky on Twenty Dollars A Day

**Author's Note:**

> Kazhig's artist notes: I really enjoyed reading your fic and drawing the two illustrations!
> 
> Breathedout's author notes: This story is roughly modelled on by [The Flight Before Christmas](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5231402/), although it's _inspired_ more by the conceit of this challenge: for which, huge thanks to the mods for putting the whole thing together and for their excellent organization throughout. 
> 
> Also thanks to my amazing artist [Kazhig](https://kazhig-pm.tumblr.com/), who captured so much of the goofiness and charm of Penny and Frankie in this story, and to [nyctanthes](https://nyctanthes-arbor-tristis.tumblr.com/) for the extremely thoughtful and helpful sensitivity read for Penny's US-born Desi background. 
> 
> And, of course, to [greywash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash), both for relatively small, story-related things like introducing me to this show/challenge in the first place, and the enthusiastic brainstorming help during the planning stages of this novella, and the thorough and thoughtful beta of my finished draft; and also for much larger things like sharing with me a writing practice, and a dog-rearing practice, and a home-creating practice, and a life. I am tremendously lucky to know you, every day.

"No judgment or whatever," said the bartender, "but it looks like you need it." 

Penny unstuck his face from the green formica countertop to squint up at her. _Kendra_ , her name tag said. Cute girl— _dimples_ ; that G&T—and she was interested, obviously. But this morning her eyeliner and her expression and the elaborate shaved designs on the sides of her undercut, all came together and hit him as just. Too much. Fuck, his head. The piped-in stereo treated them all to a slightly-too-loud sales pitch on how they could have a _Hol-Ly Jol-Ly Christ-Mas_ ; while on the giant TV behind Kendra, a white woman's disembodied hands were covering a larger-than-life birthday cake in green-and-white frosting. Across the bottom of the screen, the seemingly-unrelated closed captioning scrolled the message: I HAVE ALWAYS HELD IT A TOP PRIORITY TO DEVELOP A SENSIBLE SOLUTION TO— 

Penny closed his eyes. Opened them. Focus on one point, right, to get your stomach to chill the fuck out: so he breathed, and blinked down at the stack of paper cocktail napkins propped on the bar by his elbow. _5ive Steak_ , the napkins said, in a generically "Play ball!" kind of font. How do you pronounce that? Penny wondered. Five-ive? Then the thought wouldn't shut up; kept clunking around in his brain. Five-ive. Five-ive. Was the 5 supposed to be an S? Was there a pun he wasn't getting? Middle of the afternoon in an airport bar, still with a splitting headache and right on the edge of hurling was a hell of a morning after. Sive. Five-ive. Fuck this, he thought, and gave up on the supposed calming power of the napkins. Better to just dive back into his G&T. 

"Yeah, well," he said, reaching for it. He couldn't come up with anything else to say pithier than _Hair of the dog_ , which was more than redundant to point out at this stage in the conversation. So he just picked it up and took a long swig of—

"What _is_ this shit?" he asked. It was like being punched in the mouth with a rancid candy cane: _just his luck_ he thought, seeking out a fucking clock despite himself, despite— _everything_. Noting down: 2:55pm. His water glass, of course, was empty.

Two painstakingly shaped eyebrows rose together. "Pine and peppermint martini," said Kendra. "Holiday special." 

"Ugh," Penny said. "That's just—terrible. Sorry, I ordered a gin and to—what the fuck, man, who are _you_?" 

Because the dude next to him at the bar had just—he'd just reached over and _taken_ Penny's drink. He'd reached into Penny's personal space and taken his drink, and was now sipping on it without introducing himself or anything. Kinda pudgy, Black or mixed-race dude. Full beard; sleepy eyes. Pristine rollerbag—Louis Vuitton, strangely, given his faded t-shirt and old jeans—that was visibly way over the onboard dimension allowance. He didn't _look_ like the type to pick fights with strangers in random airport bars, but if anyone was going to land himself that kind of happy surprise it would of course be Penny. 2:57, he noted, and then hated himself for checking.

"Peppermint's my favorite," the guy said, and he shrugged. 

"So order your own," Penny said. No reaction whatsoever from this asshole, so he looked to Kendra for backup. His old buddy Kendra, he felt; she'd have to back him up: it'd be a public health hazard to let jerkoffs just walk into bars and start taking other people's drinks. But Kendra looked unmoved. Behind her the TV was now advertising a documentary on Richard Nixon. _Tricky Dick_ , flashed a shot of a protestor's sign; as the closed captioning, stuck in its own world—or possibly, Penny thought, a last parting message from Julia; it sounded like her—continued to insist that it HELD IT A TOP PRIORITY TO DEVELOP A SENSIBLE SOLUTION TO THIS, THIS CHAIN OF, THIS DILEMMA, I HAVE ALWAYS HELD IT A—well, Penny thought, sourly. If that's all she had to say there was no need to magic it onto an airport television just to be three hundred percent sure of getting the last word. He'd heard it all already, her _developments_. Her _dilemmas_. Her _sensible solutions_. Here he was, come to think of it: right in the middle of one, now. So, fine: sensible. Reasonable. He could be reasonable. No need to spell back a rebuttal to her poorly-made argument; whatever.

Penny spread his hands. Reasonably. The voice of reason. "He should order his own," he told Kendra; but Kendra just shrugged. 

"You just said you didn't want it," she told him, and sauntered over to the bottles. "I'll get you that vodka tonic"; and Penny was about to correct her again, _eminently_ reasonably, noting that it was now 3:03pm, when a voice over the PA system interrupted the Most! Wonderful Time! Of the Year! to announce last boarding call for Jet Blue Flight 1323 to LAX, departing from Gate 14. 

Because of course. Of course Penny had somehow, inexplicably, managed to miss all the previous announcements. Of course he now had to bolt with that horrible rotten mint taste still in his mouth and no booze until cruising altitude. Of course he had to sprint the length of the terminal with his gut churning just to slide in the gate seconds before they locked the door, as the agent was repeating into the mouthpiece "Adiyodi, Passenger Adiyodi"; of course the cabin was too full for him to fit his roller-bag in the overhead compartment and of course they insisted on charging him for ground-check even though they weren't supposed to; of course he was held up in the aisle for a further five minutes as a flight attendant attempted to pacify the incredibly obnoxious woman in 15C who was objecting, loudly, to being seated next to someone who, according to her, was too fat for his assigned seat and infringing on her precious personal space; and of course, of _course_ , when he finally made it to his seat it was a middle one. A middle one, what's more, between an adolescent white boy and, in the aisle seat where Julia should have been—who else?—his drink-stealing neighbor from the bar. The guy looked totally calm and collected. Like he'd never been hassled about or or overcharged for or harangued because of anything, at all, despite being—well, a big guy—definitely bigger than the poor humiliated passenger in 15B; and conspicuously more overpacked than Penny; and not, obviously, all that worried about other people's boundaries. He looked like he'd never suffered through a shitty coach flight in his life. 

"How did you even _get_ here in—you know what," Penny said, "never mind." 

"Okay," said his neighbor, with perfect fucking equanimity, swinging himself back down into his seat and rebuckling his seatbelt; so Penny basically _had_ to just shut up and not make any more of a thing out of it, even though, as a matter of fact, if he were being totally honest, he actually did want to demand an explanation for how it was even possible the dude could have beat him onto the plane, since when Penny'd taken off at a sprint from good old Five-ive he'd still been kicking back at the bar. Casually sipping on the drink Penny had paid for. _This_ asshole, Penny thought, and scrunched down further in his cramped middle seat. He looked at his watch, noted 3:17, imagined Julia saying—and then bit the inside of his mouth until it bled. 

As they taxied out to the runway the toddler behind Penny got an early start on kicking the back of his seat: thunk. Five-ive. Thunk. The teenager in the outside seat huffed, sullenly, though it wasn't _his_ back being kicked; he stuck his earbuds in and slouched against the window. Thunk. The drink-stealer paged through the in-flight magazine in a pleased-with-the-world way that managed to be annoying for no reason Penny could explain. Thunk. The pocket in front of Penny's seat didn't even _have_ an in-flight magazine, he realized; but that didn't rate a time-check because neither did the teenager's. Thunk. In fact, from where Penny sat, it didn't look like any of the other seats had them. The plane picked up speed now; the runway noise giving way to liftoff. Penny breathed carefully so that he didn't throw up, glaring vaguely toward the aisle. From between two pages of an article on exploring the traditional hutongs of Beijing, a twenty-dollar bill fluttered into the drink-stealer's lap: figured. Thunk. The lights of Newark, shrinking below them. A few hours later, Penny thought, and Julia'd be taking off to the same sight. More or less. And then he'd come back to the city, and the lights would look the same but she'd be nowhere in them. He tried to remember the New York he'd lived in, before her. It somehow hadn't seemed all that empty back then, before he'd known better. Thunk. Thunk. The booze cart could come around any time. 

Seventy or so thunks later, the captain came on the PA to say they'd reached their cruising altitude. Seatbelt sign, approved electronic devices, blah blah. The teenager's earbuds had been blaring since before takeoff; Penny's head hurt—ok, hurt even more than it already had—to think about how loud they must be if they were actually in your ears. But to his credit the drink-stealer did wait for the all-clear before getting his tablet out of his bag, powering it up, tapping an app, and—

"Uh—what are you doing?" Penny said. Though: the answer was obvious, wasn't it? There the dude sat, no headphones in sight, hitting play on the opening of _Monty Python and the Holy Grail_. 

His neighbor looked at him. Eyebrows up. A full three seconds went by, and then: "You don't like this movie?" the guy said. 

"Are you like. _Trying_ to be an asshole," said Penny. In front of him someone hissed, and a disapproving Black grandmother type turned around in her seat, lifting herself up so that she could glare at him over the top of it.

" _Language_ ," she scolded him. She had her glasses on a little string around her neck and everything. "There are _children_ on this flight!" 

"Okay," Penny said. "Okay! Sorry! Jesus!" 

"Young _man_!" the woman said; so Penny put his hands up and kept ostentatiously quiet until she sat back down. Meanwhile, the drink-stealer was looking at him like he was some kind of bizarre puzzle. 4:34 by the clock.

"I just assumed," the guy murmured, and then "Hey," reaching over Penny to jostle the shoulder of the teenager, who took his earbuds out with a scowl. "Do you like this movie?" 

He flipped the tablet so the screen was angled right, and the kid's whole sullen little face just lit up. 

"Shit, yeah, it's my favorite!" he said. Because of course. Of course it was. "Can we watch it now?"

Penny's neighbor turned back to him, bemused. "Is it _not_ your favorite?" he asked. Sounding—surprised. The asshole actually sounded _surprised_ to come across a person on a full flight who didn't want to be subjected to a bunch of gangly English jerks prancing around in armor. 

Penny's temples were throbbing. _Still_ , nobody had offered him a drink. 

"It's not—you can't just— _decide_ —" he started, but his neighbor, looking thoughtful, was reaching across the aisle, tapping the shoulder of a middle-aged white dude in a business suit who was checking figures against a spreadsheet open on his laptop.

" _Yes_?" the man snapped, and Penny thought: _finally_.

"Hey man," said the drink-stealing Python-watcher. "I'm Frankie, by the way. What do you think of this movie? Wanna do like a cabin-wide watch-along?" 

The businessman reached out to tilt the laptop screen; then started chuckling, hand to his five-o-clock shadow. 

"Now, gosh," he said, in a broad Midwestern accent. "I haven't seen that in _years_. I remember when I first saw it, in the theater in—what must it have been? ''74? '75? I remember I just about wet myself; Christ I haven't laughed like that in—" 

"Yeah," Penny interrupted, "totally. But you know, like she said: kids, right. It's probably not cool for them to see, like, limbs hacked off, or—"

"I'm _sorry_?" the businessman said, affronted. "It's a _classic_ "; as the grandmother in front of Penny clucked, " _No_ discernment these days, no _judgement_."

"Come on!" Penny said. "For real?" 

"How about you?" Frankie said, turning around in his seat, to the harried mother of the toddler behind them. "Would you and your daughter like to watch this with me?" 

The infuriating thing, thought Penny, was that the dude still wasn't, like, _combative_ at all. He didn't even sound like he was arguing—which made Penny, who was for sure arguing, feel more than a little bit nuts. Frankie just sounded like he was taking a really heartfelt survey; like he was honestly curious what everyone would say.

The woman leaned forward to glance at the screen, then sat back and closed her eyes; in that moment she reminded him so much of Miriam trying to travel with a tiny version of himself that even through his irritation, Penny felt a pang. "Oh no," she said. "I don't quite feel up to watching anything just now."

" _Thank_ you," said Penny. "I was starting to—"

"But I always put that on to get Mellie to sleep," the woman went on; Penny sat back in his seat, defeated. "It'd be a godsend if you watched it and we could just listen. She'll be off in no time." 

And that was it, wasn't it. 4:46. Even Penny couldn't argue with an overtired mom just trying to get her kid to sleep, especially when that kid, awake, kept kicking the back of his goddamned seat. 

And so. Since the teenager, the businessman, and Frankie the drink stealer all wanted to watch, and toddler Mellie was supposed to nod off to the sound, Penny somehow ended up with Frankie's tablet in _his_ lap, the businessman and the grandmother and a couple other people gathering around in the aisle, while John Cleese and Michael Palin debated on swallow migration and coconuts, and the fucking traitorous in-flight staff failed to show up with the drinks. They failed to show up for most of the length of the movie, actually; and then the businessman had to go back to his seat, because the turbulence had started.

It didn't get better, either. 

"Sorry," Penny said, handing Frankie's tablet back to him, the kid by the window groaning in disappointment. "Sorry, I don't want to hurl on your laptop"; and loosened his seatbelt enough to sit forward with his head resting on the seat in front of him, the sick bag in his hands. He started actually throwing up around 6:09, which was the time the flight attendant got on the PA to announce that, due to unforeseen weather conditions, the plane would be making an unscheduled landing in Lexington, Kentucky. 

"Sweet," Frankie said. "I've never been to Lexington"; as Penny's stomach tried again and again to turn itself inside-out. 

In the Lexington airport a bunch of things became super apparent, super quickly. 

"I'm sorry," said the flight attendant, as she helped Penny to his feet and collected his three puke bags. "You'll need to exit the plane; we won't be taking off again this evening." 

"I'm sorry," said the gate agent, when Penny finally got up to the head of the line. "Due to these unusual atmospheric conditions all the flights in the area have been grounded; there are no more scheduled to leave until tomorrow afternoon." 

"I'm sorry," said the front desk guy at the ninth motel Penny called, asking after vacancies with his mouth still putrid, his cell battery at three percent. "We're completely full. It's all the flights being grounded, I think. I set up a cot in our mop closet and I've got a couple with a baby sharing that."

So: camping in the airport. You might assume, he thought, punching his jacket into more of a pillow shape on the floor under the row of plastic seats, that having Bing Crosby and pine-peppermint martinis shoved down his throat on a vacation he was supposed to be sharing with his fiancée, two days after she'd told him she was leaving him instead, would be as much as the coercively Christianized depths of winter could throw at him in a single year. Apparently, you'd be wrong. 

"Hey man," a voice said, over him. 

Penny blinked up at the voice, and groaned: Frankie. Of course. 

"Come _on_ ," he said, pulling his jacket-pillow over his head and deliberately not checking the time. "Fuck off already."

"I feel like we, uh." Frankie paused, like he had to think of the expression. Like it somehow wasn't one he used a lot, despite being— _himself_. "Like we—got off on the wrong foot."

"Y'think?" Penny mumbled into his jacket. He wasn't sure if Frankie heard him or not, but dude didn't fuck off. Instead he sat down on one of the plastic seats by Penny's head. 

"Listen," he said. "I feel bad for—it's just usually, that type of stuff isn't a problem. I could get us a motel room, if you wanted. On me, don't even worry." 

Penny laughed hard enough to dislodge his jacket from his head. 

"Yeah?" he said. "Good luck with that." 

"You'd rather sleep on the airport floor?" Frankie said. "I dunno, man, a bed seems better to me. If you're worried about keeping your hands to yourself or whatever; I'll—"

"If I'm— _what_ —?"

"—just follow your lead, sexually speaking, you don't need to get—hung up on all that, or—"

"I don't," Penny sputtered, "I'm— _not_ ," finally sitting up as _Hark_ to the bells _Sweet_ silver bells pounded in his head over the airport sound system. "Could you _be_ any more arrogant? If _I'm_ worried about keeping my hands to myself? When I'm alone with _you_? You think—any random person you meet is just gagging to bone? You think—"

"You're not?" Frankie said, and he was just—totally fucking calm about it; open-faced; with that _look_ again, like he'd had on the plane, when he'd asked Penny if Monty Python wasn't his favorite movie. Like he was kind of politely yet genuinely _surprised_ to learn this intriguing piece of information about a total stranger: they _don't_ think of John Cleese as a super effective hangover cure; they're _not_ drooling all over themselves to get in the pants of this totally average-looking, inconsiderate—

" _No_ , asshole," Penny said. "I'm not, and thanks for the unsolicited guesswork about how I like to fuck, by the way. Why the hell would you assume—" 

"Ex _cuse_ me, could you _keep it down_ ," said a man in the next row of seats over. "My son is trying to sleep, and neither of us appreciate being treated to your—x-rated—"

"—and anyway," said Penny, in a lower tone of voice, waving his hand at his fellow-passenger, who glowered at him before turning back around, "what're you gonna do? Huh? How are you planning to get us this supposed hotel room? What, are you just gonna pick up your phone and google "hookup motels Lexington Kentucky"? I went through four pages of search results. They've got people sleeping in fuckin' broom closets."

Frankie, looked down at Penny. Sighed. He dug fingertips into his curly hair, then shook his head; took out his phone. 

"Okay," Penny said, "Whatever, man"; but Frankie was already pulling up an app; entering his search terms; lifting the phone to his ear. A tinny female voice came over the line.

"Hey," Frankie said. "Have you had a recent cancellation?" 

Something about the way he put that— _a recent cancellation_ —kind of pinged at the edges of Penny's brain. Not _vacancies_ ; the whole town was full, sure; but—and not _any_ cancellations: _a cancellation_. _A recent cancellation_. There was something about it that—but he didn't have time to think it through before Frankie was saying, "You did, yeah, great. Yeah, I—yes, ma'am. I am in luck. Yeah, could I snag that, thanks. My buddy and I will be around in like an hour or so. Frankie Gallo. Thanks." 

And he hung up. 

He looked at Penny, who stared back. 

Infuriatingly, even now, there was no _friction_ with Frankie. There was nothing to push back against. No _I told you so_ or even a raised eyebrow—which was a big change from Julia, for whom nothing was taken for granted; with whom everything had to be taken apart and examined, analyzed, argued and rigorously cross-examined. Frankie, on the other hand—exactly like he'd done on the plane—had somehow managed to cast himself in the role of the person who just calmly proceeded to have this whole insane conversation, and Penny in the role of the idiot who'd sat on the floor in the Lexington airport and yelled about sexual positions and hotel logistics. 

"Well," Penny said, at last. He turned; punched his jacket again into a better pillow shape. "Enjoy your fuckin'—Christmas miracle room, or whatever."

"They're expecting two people," Frankie pointed out.

"Yeah," said Penny. "They sure are." 

"Man," said Frankie, after another few seconds of silence. "This is ridiculous. If you're not interested then believe me, I'm _really_ not either. Honestly I just felt bad for the movie thing on the plane; the whole—sex issue was just. I'm not used to people not—whatever. Sorry, I'm—not used to apologizing, either, so I'm probably shit at it. Don't stress out, at all. You can have the whole bed, if you want; I'll sleep on the couch."

Frankie got up. _Finally_ , Penny thought, watching him heave himself up, tip his wheelie-bag on its corner and start strolling toward the exit. Penny sat there, cross-legged on the dirty carpet, watching him go and thinking about the way he'd said _I'm not used to apologizing_ , the smallest trace of something that might actually be discomfort crossing his face. It sounded true, Penny thought. Weirdly, he believed the guy. Frankie wasn't used to people not wanting to fuck him, and he wasn't used to saying sorry. Penny'd spent the last ten years saying sorry and chasing tail, and he at least made an effort not to act like an entitled dick. Most of the time, anyway. _Some_ of the time. 

So anyway, he thought, as Frankie pushed the button for the elevator, and Penny found himself starting to get up; un-crumple his jacket; put his backpack back on over it. It wouldn't be great, sharing a room for a night with that asshole. He couldn't believe he was apparently doing it. It would probably be insufferable. He probably wouldn't be able to sleep he'd be so annoyed. In other words, he thought, six of one, half a dozen of the other: and left the hard floor and the plastic seats and the huffy Lexington traveler, to join Frankie by the elevator console down to the ride-share area. 

Mercifully, Frankie was mostly quiet in the Lyft to the hotel. It was a surprisingly long ride. Out the window there was just enough snow on the ground that the light reflected off trees; barns. White fences dividing up long sloping fields. That went on for a while and then things got kind of generically suburban: identical big brick-and-glass office block after big brick-and-glass office block, behind a solid hedge of naked trees and brambles. _Kentucky_ , he thought, to remind himself, as they passed a power station on their left, and the Lyft driver put his signal on. It looked like Anyplace, USA. 

Penny fidgeted. Flicked his finger against the automatic window switch, so that the window, in fits and stops, jerked open an inch and then closed. He caught the driver glaring back at him in the rear-view; Penny suspected he'd say something about it if he didn't think Penny might give him a bad review. Frankie was looking, too, and there was no reason _he_ shouldn't say anything; but as usual the dude seemed serene as fuck. He had this expression like if he was feeling anything it was a sort of mild interest in Penny; like Penny was some kind of weird animal in an enclosure at the zoo, and Frankie was being told a fun fact about him by his girlfriend or boyfriend or like zoo docent or whatever. Penny made the window mechanism buzz again: cold wind and the roar of the air dragging on the frame of the window at 50 miles an hour. 

"That the whole town?" Penny said. "We going _back_ out into the country?" 

He knew he was being obnoxious and he wasn't sure why he'd said it. The last thing he wanted was conversation with Frankie. And who wouldn't come back with, whatever, _You don't like it you're welcome to turn around and sleep on the airport floor_ , when someone was that kind of dick to them? He thought of Julia, her studiously patient diagnoses-cum-pep-talks: _sabotaging the experiment_ , she'd said, _because you believe it's going to fail anyway_ , so many times he'd lost count; and he'd hated every second when it was happening but hell, she was probably right. She was usually fucking right. Unlike her, Frankie, for whatever reason, was keeping his mouth shut. Which was good, obviously. Dude actually even smiled a little bit. Smiled, like Penny'd just confirmed some shrewd suspicion he'd had about him, the absolute—what business was it of his, Penny thought, as the driver took a sharp turn onto what a sign claimed was a highway, but which was actually so narrow they'd have to pull into the grass verge if another car came along from the other direction. What business was it of his, _suspecting_ things about people he'd just met? Just going ahead and _assuming_ things about them, when literally none of his assumptions so far about Penny had been, like, _remotely_ correct; and on top of that—at which point the driver hung a right between a couple of two little mini stone castles on either side of the entryway, and you could see the hotel at the end of the long drive; and Penny was distracted by the fact that, apparently, the two of them had agreed to spend the night on the set of _Gone With the Wind_. 

"They gonna let us in, you think?" he said; but Frankie just snorted through his nose, and didn't answer. 

The ride up the driveway took long enough that the silence got a little awkward. _No, really_ , Penny wanted to say, watching the rows of big white columns and the double chimneys and the huge wall of dormered windows loom closer. The driving surface was rough, like cobblestone or something. You could imagine a whole fucking staff gathering on the front porch to welcome the master home on his trusty stallion. It was a scene that usually had pretty clear casting for folks like Penny and Frankie. 

He shook himself. The Lyft—a Nissan Altima, for fuck's sake, not a horse and carriage—pulled up in front of the double-decker portico; Penny and Frankie grabbed their stuff out of the trunk. Inside, in the entryway, everything was redone: white walls and high-polish, honey-colored hardwood floors arranged in a kind of herringbone pattern. Fancy honey-wood-framed holders for all the Lexington tourist brochures, and ads for events in town. Overstuffed leather and those old-timey mirrors with the leather frames; and upper-floor mezzanine hallways that looked down on the central lobby, complete with safety railings that had the kind of whitewashed balusters you imagined spoiled little blond children wiggling their heads between and getting stuck like that. 

The white lady at the honey-wood front desk looked like once upon a time she'd probably been a spoiled blonde child, though these days it was a dye job for sure. Her smile looked real enough, though, if a little frazzled; and he was opening his mouth to say—something, who knew what; but Frankie, his hand out, beat him to it by giving his name. 

"Oh yes, Mr. _Gallo_ ," the woman said, alternately fussing at the computer and smiling up at him. "I'm Suzanne; _welcome_ to Holda House. It was something else, I tell you: I was _just_ hanging up the phone from that cancellation, and that very moment, you called!" 

That _was_ something else, Frankie agreed, in the pleasant, bored way you might agree with an uncle at Thanksgiving talking your ear off about the holiday traffic, saying yeah man, it was crazy, to get him off your back. Frankie was in luck, he said: yes; it was remarkable; yes, yes. The whole time he was agreeing with her Suzanne looked more and more confused, like she must have said something wrong, or forgotten to say something she'd thought she said, or fallen asleep and started dreaming. Penny reckoned people were usually more excited to check into a joint like this even when they hadn't been granted a random miracle to let them do it. The place was nuts. Across the lobby a fire was burning in a pit probably big enough to roast a pig; above it a full-on mantle with built-in cabinetry on either side, fancy three-pronged candelabra on top, and a big gilt mirror right in the middle. In front of it, on a giant leather sofa, a silver-haired man sat sipping brown liquor out of a cut-crystal glass. Julia would've felt right at home. If Penny stepped foot within thirty feet of the couch, he'd probably end up setting the building on fire. 

"You'll be in Room Ten," Suzanne was telling Frankie, as she handed him their keys. "It's our honeymoon suite: corner room overlooking the south pasture. Breakfast is from seven to ten in the great room. There's riding from about eleven to five; just go find Anton in the stables, he'll get you set up. And we've got a free shuttle into town every hour during the day. Just let me or Roger know if you'll be needing it."

"Thanks," said Frankie, gazing at the counter behind the desk, and giving the impression he hadn't heard a word. "Hey, is that a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle?" 

Suzanne's eyes widened; then narrowed; then her face opened out into a grin. She looked almost girlish, Penny thought. 

"A gift," she said, winding a stray piece of hair around her finger. "Would you like a taste?" 

" _Yeah_ , man," Frankie said, and then: "Hey, dude, you ever drink this stuff? Come on, try a sip": which is how Penny, as one more twist in an already-weird night, ended up standing around with his new buds Frankie and Suzanne, in an almost-literal fairy-tale mansion in Kentucky, sipping on some kind of miracle bourbon that supposedly sold for like two grand a bottle. With visions of being cast out into the snow—or being sent the bill for the leftover $1500—dancing in his head, he made Suzanne pour a couple swallows into a glass, and then recap the bottle and put the bottle back on the shelf, and then step away from the bottle, before he agreed to get close enough to the front counter to take the glass from Frankie. Who by that point was already rolling the liquor around in his mouth, completely blissed out. 

Penny sipped it. It was all right, he guessed. He was too distracted to concentrate much on the taste, but nothing horrible happened. He'd never really been a bourbon kind of guy, although he was smart enough not to say that in front of Suzanne. 

After the bourbon glasses were empty Suzanne pointed them up the wide, curved-sweeping staircase to the second floor. Penny leaned down to pick up his bag—no wheeling up those stairs, even if he had packed light. Right as he did it a maintenance guy came through the front doors; Penny looked and then looked again because the guy was—huge. Corn-fed, blonde, squeaky-pink farm boy: looked like some illustration of Paul Bunyan from the 30s. The guy's gaze passed over Penny completely; went straight to Frankie's bag, still on the floor. He said, "Want me to grab that for you, buddy?"; and: "Cool," Frankie said, so the dude did. Swept up his duffel bag and tossed it over a burly shoulder; then pivoted back around to give Frankie an up-down look with his tongue half out like Penny wasn't even there. Which—not that it _mattered_ that Penny was there, obviously. It was a relief, he told himself, to get a break from the constant attention, the come-ons; fun, sure, but when you looked like Penny they got old. Still. Even just like from a client services perspective, there were two people standing in the lobby right now, with bags; two equally paying customers, for all this asshole knew; and what were—

What were the odds.

What _were_ the odds, Penny thought, more slowly, choking down—laughter, suddenly, incredulous. _Could it_ —was he imagining—? For so long Julia had been his backstop gauge for what was reasonable and verifiable and what was bananapants nuts. This sure as shit seemed nuts, but. But the phone call to the hotel. And the Monty fucking Python movie, and all the passengers on the plane. And the bourbon, and this—whatever, bellboy out of a Nude Firefighters charity calendar. _Could_ it—?

It was a crazy thought. Was it? He hadn't had anywhere near enough bourbon for the stuff to have gone to his head. 

He followed Frankie and his new admirer up the beautifully-restored parquet staircase and down the hall: up ahead of him the two of them were getting acquainted, as Penny questioned his sanity and tried not to laugh. _Roger_ , the maint guy was saying, and Penny didn't care about the bourbon, he felt _high_ ; he felt like schoolgirl-giggling and squeaking out _Seriously?_ and there was literally no reason not to do exactly that if he wanted to but he was also having this weird compulsion to like— _maintain_. Which was probably natural, probably a solid instinct really, the kind of thing where if you felt like you might be going even more insane than you usually were, in the middle of a town full of strangers, you maybe didn't exactly want to advertise that fact to everyone around you. Or at least, you didn't if your life worked like Penny Adiyodi's. 

Roger stopped in front of the door at the end of a hall of light-blue doors in white walls, this one enclosed a bit, off the mezzanine. "More privacy," he said, with a wink, and Penny stifled a snort. Frankie gave Roger a look; then gave Penny one; and Penny thought, almost dizzy suddenly, of the moment in the airport when Frankie had said, _If you're really worried about keeping your hands to yourself or whatever_ ; and the thing was. The thing was, Roger was like. Leaning forward. Hip cocked. Farm-boy skin flushed pink like he honestly couldn't wait to get his hands all over _Frankie_ , who, like—Penny looked at him again. Still the same kind of hairy, pudgy, glasses-wearing dude. Still wearing a slightly faded Fred Flintstone "YABBA DABBA DOOBIE" t-shirt. Penny couldn't see any reason that a guy like Roger should be expected to stand there, staring at him. The upshot of which was that Penny _also_ stood there staring at him; until eventually Frankie said, "Cool man, thanks, see you around," and unlocked the door with Suzanne's key. He strolled through; and since Penny had no particular desire to stand out in the hallway any longer than he needed to pretending he didn't feel like he'd just taken four hits of high-grade acid, he nodded his head in what he hoped was a normal way, and followed Frankie on in. 

The room was—

It was a lot. 

"She did say it's their honeymoon suite," Frankie said.

"That would explain it being in this, uh," Penny said. "Turret."

White octagonal walls, windows reflecting them back and _so many_ mirrored surfaces: a fucking crystal chandelier and a series of like delicate blue-and-white-upholstered sofas with frames in wood carved into French-looking curlicues; and fussy little side-tables with mirrored lamps on them; and floor-to-ceiling navy brocade curtains on the widows; and beveled mirrors between every pair of windows Penny could see; and he couldn't bring himself to look at the ceiling right now but he would bet there was one there too. And the huge, white sleigh bed stretching out in the middle of it all, between them and the door that Penny assumed led to the bathroom. 

"I'm," he said, and gestured toward it. Slung his bag on the floor next to the night-stand at the head of the bed nearest the door; then almost tripped over his own feet trying to get himself across to the john.

On the other side of the door he just stood for a second, back to the door. Taking a couple breaths, trying to get himself back under control. Grounding exercises, Julia'd always been on him about fixing his shit with grounding exercises: so he counted fifteen black-and-white checkered floor tiles between his feet and the wall behind the big porcelain clawfoot tub; seven tiles from the big casement windows with their white curtains, to the back sides of the freestanding marble-topped vanities with their elaborate brass taps. Two sinks: _his and hers_ , Penny thought. _Lucky and–_ and then his stomach felt again like he might either lose his lunch on the high-polish floor or collapse into giggles so he just. Fifteen feet by seven. Each window four panes by two. Breathe. 

He pushed himself off the door. Ran cold in the left-hand sink and put his hands into it: the shock of the winter water. In the mirror, there he was: two days of stubble and his eyes still fucked up from the breakup and the hangover but it was him: the same old Penny, just freaking out in the bathroom of the honeymoon suite of an over-the-top B&B outside Lexington, Kentucky, with some random-ass guy who might be— _All right, Adiyodi_ , he told himself. Flattened his forearms down to cold marble, and put his forehead on top of them, chest heaving with something that must have been laughter. _Get your shit together_. 

When he opened the door again, Frankie was sitting smack in the middle of the blue-and-white curlicued sofa, feet kicked up on a tasseled ottoman: his backpack open to his left and the window cranked open to his right, a lit joint in one hand and a can of beer in the other. One of the fussy little lamps was on but the big chandelier was off, and the light was kind of golden and weirdly welcoming. Penny stood there in the bathroom doorway for a minute, thinking: when you imagine spending the night in a country house with some kind of supernaturally-powered weirdness, you never expect it to roll its own. You don't expect it to create like a _cozy ambiance_ , either. The whole deal is pretty unexpected, honestly, for most people; and Penny should know. 

"You okay?" Frankie said, looking up; holding the joint toward him. "You want some?" 

Moving fast Penny grabbed another of the fussy lamps—the one on the little table by the bathroom door—and chucked it as hard as he could, right at Frankie's head. He had a good arm; his aim was dead-on—or would have been, if it hadn't been for the way the electrical cord, as the thing flew through the air, snaked up to wrap itself around one of the legs of the chandelier, knocking the lamp off-course enough that it missed Frankie completely, shattering to pieces against the frame of the open window. As it broke apart it loosened an icicle from the upper casing and—via some sort of ricochet that was, Penny felt, frankly kind of unnecessarily elaborate—knocked it back down through the window and right into Frankie's open beer can. Penny, who had been _right_ , holy shit, he'd been right, slapped a palm against the door jamb. Frankie looked down at his beer like he wasn't even surprised. 

"Yeah," he said, "I guess it _was_ a little warm. Uh—does that mean you don't want a hit?" 

Penny let himself start laughing; at this point there was no reason to hide it. How perfect, how _fucking_ perfect could you fucking get. 

"Nah, man," he said, shaking his head, "I definitely want a hit." 

He crossed the octagon and flopped down next to Frankie on the sofa; he didn't try to be careful when he did it, and a few drops of Frankie's beer sloshed back out of the opening and onto his jeans. Frankie didn't seem like he even noticed—he was passing the joint over so Penny could take it—but Penny did. _Take note of your surroundings_ , Julia had always told him, _anything could be important_ ; and Miriam, when she'd reached the end of her rope, _Can't you just be a little more careful?_ But the thing was, he _had_ been careful; he'd always been careful; he was screwed so tight he could hardly breathe. Just now he'd had to consciously relax about forty-three muscles he normally kept clenched at all times, just to flop down on a sofa without feeling like he was doing some kind of trigonometry problem in his head. With anyone else, he thought, looking at Frankie's jeans, those three drops of beer would have shorted out the whole hotel. 

"You been like this all your life?" Penny asked, exhaling smoke. 

"Like wh—"

"Come on, man," said Penny. "The drink. The movie. The hotel. The bourbon. The— _Roger_. Hell, Suzanne. You're lucky. Like, not run-of-the-mill occasionally lucky; I mean _really_ lucky." 

Frankie looked at him. Took a swig of his beer, with a little smile on his face, and reached over to take the joint back. "Sure," he said. 

"Like," Penny said, starting to laugh again as the pot hit his system at the same moment the absurdity of the whole thing came back around. "You're legit _charmed_. Or—whatever the opposite of c— _blessed_ , maybe you're fucking _blessed_. And let me tell you, man, that is just—" and he was laughing so hard now it was hard to keep talking but he managed, "—it's really, no wait, it's honestly—honestly _amazing_ because—"

"Dude, take a _breath_ ," Frankie said. But he was starting to laugh too, just sitting there watching Penny practically piss himself and starting to chuckle too even though he didn't—he couldn't—

"Oh my god," Penny said, "I can't—I can't just _tell_ you. That'd be—I'm gonna—"

"Tell me what?" said Frankie. There was this wide, warm grin all over his face now, so honestly happy to be where he was right now, in this bananas hotel room with Penny of all people and anyway he looked more— _interested_ , or whatever, in this stuttered hysterical conversation than Penny'd seen him look in any interaction he'd seen the guy have all day. And that—something about that let Penny get himself under control enough that he could stop his laughing jag. His fucking face was wet; his abs _ached_. 

"I," he said, taking the joint back from Frankie and hitting it again, "am gonna _show_ you." Holding in the smoke he wagged a finger at Frankie like a crotchety old teacher; Frankie busted out laughing. Penny, coughing, passed him back the joint and then stood up; stumbled to his back. Sleep shorts; laptop. He had research to do. Over his shoulder he told Frankie: "You're just gonna have to wait and see; I'll show you tomorrow."

They were late getting to sleep, even though Penny'd gone right off to brush his teeth. Frankie'd sat up on the sofa, smoking and playing some indie video game about a haunted house on his phone which seemed to be slow-moving enough that when Penny'd got himself propped up in bed, with his laptop, and started asking questions which he'd tried to make vague enough not to give anything away, Frankie seemed like he could answer them without any trouble. "Luck aside," Penny had asked him, "what's your skill level at, say, Frisbee? How about baseball? What about Street Fighter II?" Frankie'd laughed at him but he'd answered every time. He hadn't even really pestered Penny with whys and what-the-fucks; Penny got the impression he kind of liked the suspense. Even Penny had to admit it was a way more interesting and enjoyable night than the one he'd thought he was about to have, camped out on the floor of the Lexington airport. And even though he felt guilty even thinking a thing like this, there were ways it was even better than LA with Julia. At least Julia as she'd been lately, when everything that wasn't either intra-departmental politics or replacement naturalism ( _a branch_ , he often heard her explain, to people at parties and once at the bank, _of naturalized epistemology_ ) made her more or less glaze over, and every time it happened he could feel himself getting less and less fun to be around; and everything either one of them said to the other one seemed fraught with tension. And it wasn't that there hadn't been good parts, still; it wasn't that he didn't still wish, aching with it, that he were there, or she were here, or the both of them were poolside in California like they'd been supposed to be, but. This was easy, wasn't it. Sitting up in bed quizzing Frankie on his skill level at basketball, while Frankie got gently stoned. Penny didn't even totally realize he was falling asleep until he woke up: Frankie snoring next to him in his yesterday's t-shirt shirt and boxer shorts, with chilly winter sunshine pouring through the windows. 

The bed was insanely comfortable, the air outside it freezing thanks to the window that Frankie'd apparently left open when he came to bed, and Penny spent about five seconds stretching, squinting, and figuring he'd just go back to sleep, no reason—only—there _was_ a reason not to, and when he remembered it he was out of bed in a second flat, checking his phone. Just after nine, which must, Penny thought, be Frankie's influence: it would be just Penny's luck to sleep through an opportunity like this one and then be stuck back on a plane to California, alone, never knowing—whatever. Never having followed the thing through. 

For a night owl with a fondness for better living through chemistry, Frankie was surprisingly easy to wake up. He didn't punch Penny, or groan and roll away when Penny shook his shoulder, or pull the covers up over his head or anything. He just kind of _let go_ of sleep with the same kind of blasé good humor that he seemed to do most other things. "What's up?" he said; and "Come on," Penny told him. "I figured out where we should go, you know. So I can explain." 

And it seemed like that was all it took. Ten minutes later Frankie was ready for breakfast, and fifteen minutes after that they were back on the road. They didn't even have to get a ride share: turned out Roger was on his way into town, and was only too thrilled to give _Frankie_ a lift for free. If his face soured a little when he realized Penny was coming along too, it happened when it was too late to back out of the agreement. So the three of them piled into Roger's pickup, Frankie in the middle, and spent twenty minutes or so making small talk as Roger drove them back toward town, the countryside around the hotel-castle firming back up into suburbs. Most of the conversation was honestly Roger angling for Frankie to come with him into town, or offering a little too willingly to come back and pick them up—offers which Frankie deferred to Penny, and Penny, grinning, declined. 

Looking kind of forlorn about it, Roger dropped them at last outside a complex prominently advertising ice skating—TWO RINKS, the signage read—and then, in smaller font: THREE GYMNASIUMS, 54 HOLES OF BIBLICAL MINIATURE GOLF. Frankie started laughing, but Penny made him stand back from the ticket kiosk: not that it was possible to get an unbiased sample or whatever, not really—he should know; Jules had been trying for years—but he still insisted on paying both their entrance fees for unlimited holes. 

"Okay," he said, coming back with the putters to a Frankie still laughing at him, but also visibly intrigued. "First of all, just to get a control on this: you should know I actually have pretty good aim. Decent hand-eye coordination. I'm not actually—or—I _shouldn't_ be—a half-bad golfer." 

He held up the neon-blue ball for Frankie's inspection, then backed up a few yards, and put it down on the ground outside the entrance to the MIRACLES course. He took aim, and hit the ball, which rolled right between Frankie's blue Converse. It wasn't _impressive_ or anything—since he was trying to demonstrate a point, and therefore actually did care a little whether it worked out, he hadn't wanted to try anything very risky. But it was enough. Frankie nodded, looking down at his sneakers, then back up at Penny.

"That's when there are no stakes, right," Penny said. "Nothing to gain or lose, who cares. Okay." 

The course was pretty deserted. The website had said the mini-golf course was normally closed all winter; they were trying out a new promotional thing for Christmas, but apparently they hadn't got enough buzz going to fill up the park. Which meant Penny had his pick of holes, and he wanted something simple, something—like this, he thought, coming to a stop next to a plaque that read JESUS FEEDS 5,000. This shouldn't be too much more difficult than what he'd just done: the green was more or less a straight shot from the tee to the hole, with only a see-through screen in between them supported by a metal frame, and emblazoned with pictures of what looked like four baguettes and two rainbow trout. The screen didn't really block your view of the hole, and the four metal pegs supporting the screen were unlikely to stop you making a straight putt. 

Penny lined it up; took his shot: calm and competent. The ball rolled down the green toward the hole, then clipped its side on one of the metal pegs, and ricocheted to the side. A second peg clipped it on the other side, and it rolled back toward Penny and Frankie, and the tee. 

Penny didn't even bother looking to Frankie for a reaction; not yet. He walked over to the ball and lined up the shot again: took his time with it. Aimed for precision. At this angle it shouldn't be hugely difficult: the ball was close to the screen so the path through the pegs should be easy; then the angle made for a pretty simple ricochet off the wooden border and into the hole. Penny tapped the ball and it rolled calmly toward the opening between the pegs; then hit an invisible bump in the green, twisted to one side, clipped an edge again, and came to a stop just resting against one of the pegs, on the wrong side. 

"You're legit trying for the hole?" Frankie said, and Penny smiled. 

"I wouldn't _taint the demonstration_ ," he said. 

Frankie snorted. "You're kind of an asshole," he said, and Penny gave him a grin before tapping his ball, as light as possible, to put it between two pegs and over far enough that he'd have a direct line to the hole. That went okay, although it took him another stroke to actually sink it: four strokes on a hole with a par of one. 

When it was Frankie's turn he plunked the ball down on the start area and hit it without even pausing to take aim. It rolled smoothly down the green, between the pegs, and sank without complaint into the hole: a no-fuss, no-muss hole-in-one. He'd turned around before he even saw it land: his eyes were bright and they were fixed on Penny. 

"Next hole," he said, gesturing along the course to PAUL AND SILAS FREED FROM PRISON. But Penny, smiling, twirling his putter, shook his head. 

"We've got an agenda to stick to here, Gallo. Our plane leaves at five and we've got some ground to cover. For the next phase of my demonstration we'll need something a little higher stakes, something—ah," he said. "Follow me." 

And he led him through the MIRACLES course, past MOSES' STAFF BECOMES A SNAKE and THE PLAGUE OF BLOOD, to Hole 6: WATER FROM THE ROCK. It was a lot more elaborate than JESUS FEEDS 5,000: a fake-rock enclosure about the size of an outhouse, with a mechanical waterfall cascading from the front of it, hid the tee-off area; and when the ball emerged into the outdoors it had to go up a series of 90-degree turns uphill, with landings in between, on a course which snaked around the rock and ended up on a platform on top. The platform also had a plain wood cross, which Penny guessed must mark the hole. He looked up at it, and grinned. 

"So," he said. "Key information. When I bought the tickets, the attendant let me know they were having a special. During this whole new open-during-Christmas thing, if you come in and get a hole-in-one on this particular hole, they'll give you a round of golf free." 

"Why WATER FROM THE ROCK?" Frankie said. "That doesn't have anything to do with Christmas."

"No idea," said Penny. "I'm an agnostic raised by a nonpracticing Jew and a Hindu atheist." 

"They should have it: free golf if you get a hole in one on like, ANGELIC ANNUNCIATION TO MARY THAT SHE WILL BEAR THE SAVIOR CHILD." 

"I—somehow doubt they have a mini golf hole devoted to a Galilean virgin getting knocked up," Penny said. "The mechanics of the whole thing are kind of too on the nose."

"Well then, like," Frankie said. "Something from the New Testament, at least. Jesus feeding 5,000."

"Gallo," said Penny. "JESUS FEEDS 5,000 would obviously be way too easy. It's just a straight green with a random screen in the middle of it: you know this. And before you say it: the fact that it took me four strokes to sink the ball is the _point I'm trying to demonstrate_ if you'd just let me get on with it." 

"Go!" Frankie said, making like he was fed up but he was laughing, his whole body shaking with it. Penny _liked_ it; somehow liked to see the guy so delighted when he was normally just unruffled; cool; so Penny made like he was exasperated in the same way.

" _Like I was saying_ ," he said. "Through January One, get a hole-in-one on this bad boy and they'll comp you a round of golf. So. It's difficult and I've got a lot to gain by making it. Well: eleven whole dollars, but also my dignity. And it's the same for you."

"Yeah," said Frankie. "I guess."

"So you go first," Penny said. 

Frankie looked taken aback for a moment but then he put his hands up; walked into the enclosure. Penny stayed outside so he could see the progress of the ball: after a second it careened out of the enclosure, bounced off the first ricochet board, rolled zealously up the first ramp and hit the second ricochet board, turned and careened up the second ramp—after which, Penny couldn't see it anymore. He walked up the steps next to the ramp, with Frankie following behind him. When the two of them got to the top of the rock, there it was: the little neon ball, resting innocently in the basket at the foot of the cross. Frankie stared down, impassive; Penny grinned across at him.

"Lucky shot," he said. "Thanks for the eleven bucks." 

He led the way back down the stairs, Frankie following, and then—"Uh, I'd stand back if I were you," he said. "Hard to tell where this'll end up." Frankie stepped back and Penny, with the same meticulousness as before, lined up the shot. It really was just luck whether the ball ended up actually in the hole once it got to the top of the rock; the key thing was to hit it with enough force so that it made it to the top platform, rather than rolling all the way back down the ramps. There wasn't much of a way around that, but Penny did at least size up the various angles involved before giving the ball a good _thwack_ in the same direction Frankie'd done. Penny's ball rocketed out of the little enclosure, with Penny following after. It bounced against the first ricochet point, and whizzed up to the first landing, at which point it hit the railing to the right of the ricochet point, where there was apparently a fault in the wood—a divot, or a warp—"What the fuck," said Frankie, laughing, actually clapping his hands, as the ball soared sideways, back toward the rock, a small neon chaos agent that flew over the side of the rock wall and lodged itself in the upper reaches of the waterfall mechanism. A grinding noise, and a thunk; and the water gradually slowed from a rush, to a stream, to a trickle. Deep inside the fake-rock, something clanged, and went still. 

"Shit," Frankie said, impressed; Penny put his hand over his eyes. 

"That—will probably cost more than eleven dollars," he said, and Frankie laughed. He ran back up the steps, clambered out over the safety railings separating the upper platform from the top of the water feature, and just _stuck his hand_ into the mechanics of the waterfall and rooted around. Which pretty much made Penny's point for him all by itself: if _he'd_ tried that kind of trick he definitely would've lost a hand. Frankie, though, standing up with the ball held aloft, had barely gotten his sweatshirt wet; he pressed down with his heel, a clank came from inside the rock, and the water started up again. _Figures_ , Penny thought; but aloud he just said: "Higher stakes. You see what I'm saying." 

Frankie grinned down at him. Then put his hand in his pocket a moment after Penny'd felt _his_ phone vibrate: as Frankie pulled his out Penny did the same, to read: _All flights out of LEX grounded. Departure estimate: TBD_. He looked up to the rock, to see Frankie putting his phone back in his pocket, and shrugged. 

"Actually play a round?" he said. "Since we'll be here a while?"

"Yeah, dude," Frankie said. "Let's see where it goes."

So they experimented. Playing out the rest of the MIRACLES course, Penny's performance actually started to improve, since his score had already climbed so high, and Frankie's stayed so low, that there was no possible chance he'd be able to catch up. "I'm so far ahead the stakes are low again," Frankie said; and Penny said, "Yeah, yeah, smug bastard," as he executed a three-point ricochet off the curved sides of a giant red heart-shaped green—GOD'S LOVE, the placard said—and managed a hole-in-one. "At least you've got evidence I'm not just a godawful golfer." 

"Yeah," Frankie said. "I was really judging you on your golf game, man. _What a loser_ , I thought; but I guess you're okay after all."

After that they switched to match play, to equalize the per-hole stakes. On the OLD TESTAMENT course they agreed that whoever got fewer strokes on each hole would win the point, but that total strokes wouldn't be counted. This restored the expected status quo—Frankie's holes in one; Penny's scores in the 3-5 range; which Frankie soon deemed boring and in need of experimentation. On DAY THREE—a long strip of green with blue semicircular depressions staggered to the left and right, preventing a straight shot to the hole centered at the end—Frankie straight-up turned 180 degrees, and hit his ball off in the other direction, back toward the miraculous creation of light and darkness. Penny raised his eyebrows; Frankie just gestured toward the green. With such a large handicap for Frankie, Penny _might_ stand a chance of winning the hole—an increase in stakes, then. 

Frankie watched over Penny's shoulder as he took aim, then sent the ball down the strip on the far-left side of the green, not trying to avoid the blue-colored "water" but instead sticking to a predictable direction for the divots. Instead of following an up-down but essentially straightforward path, though, the ball caught at the top of one of the rims and rolled around the inside of the semicircle like a bike on a velodrome, gradually losing momentum until it came to rest at the bottom of the depression. Penny's second stroke resulted in a hop to a right-hand depression; his third got him back to the original left-hand one. His fourth got him stuck in a depression a little further along the course, at least; his fifth had the ball ricocheting back into the same place it started from. Frankie, whose ball was now back to the starting point, came over and put a commiserating hand on Penny's shoulder as Penny tried to nudge it back out of the trap—and the ball actually rolled along the narrow strip of green between the two remaining blue patches, to come to rest believably near the hole. 

"Huh," Penny said. 

It still wasn't _in_ , of course, but… _Interesting_ , Penny thought. It took him two more strokes to actually sink the ball, which put him at eight—you were supposed to stop counting at six, but "The demonstration," Penny intoned; and Frankie: "Oh yeah, man. The demonstration": saying it like he was making fun but he was obviously _fascinated_ , at least as much as Penny was, he didn't try to hide it; and since there was practically no one else there, it was no big deal to just keep counting. The whole time Penny kept thinking about that hand on his shoulder. 

At NOAH'S ARK he said, "Can you putt one-handed? I want to try something." 

So they stood at the bottom of the ramp up to, and around the corner from, the entrance to the brown-painted Ark enclosure—watched by the crowd of plastic and ceramic animals scattered around its base—and they joined hands. Frankie's right in Penny's left, to start with: which left Penny's right free to hold the putter. It was fucking awkward, on a couple levels. Even though they still had the whole place to themselves, Penny still spared a thought for the likely opinions on dude/dude PDA if anyone _were_ around; but more than that he just didn't have much control over his swing. Still, he thought, in the name of—science, or whatever. He lined up the shot as best he could: aiming to get the ball up the ramp at an angle so as to bounce it off the back-left corner at more or less a 45-degree angle, then hit the front support of the perpendicular part of the green at the longer, more open angle that would ease it toward the hole. 

Frankie's hand was warm in his. Soft, for a guy's. 

He swung the putter back, and made contact with the ball; then stepped back, his hand still in Frankie's hand, their fingers intertwined. Together they watched it climb the ramp, bounce off the back corner at a more acute angle than he'd planned, which meant that when it rolled back toward them it hit the front panel and rebounded at 90 degrees, bouncing straight back against the back support again before coming to rest in roughly the middle of the green, lined up for the hole. Frankie whistled. 

"I mean, not _great_ ," he said. "But not bad, for you." 

"Yeah, yeah, fuck you, Gallo," Penny said, laughing, and punched Frankie's arm—which he had to reach across his own body to do, since he was still holding his hand. 

They climbed the ramp hand-in-hand and Penny took his second shot—which stopped _just_ short of the hole, but on the third stroke no disasters came along to stop him from knocking it in—putting him at just one stroke behind par: the best he'd done all morning. 

Back at the base of the ark, they swapped sides. Penny could feel the little squeeze in Frankie's left hand, when he swung the putter with his right. The ball sailed up the ramp, hit the far-back corner at a perfect 45, then the front support at an obtuse angle… that was just a little bit _too_ obtuse, as it turned out, and rolled just to the right of the hole before it came to a stop. Frankie, right behind Penny and then side-by-side with him, got to the top of the ramp just as it was slowing and stopping. He stood there, looking down at it, for a long few seconds, his fingers tight around Penny's knuckles. 

"You're for real," Frankie said, at last, half under his breath still staring down at the ball. Then he turned to Penny, his eyes wide and his whole face just _delighted_ and Penny—god damn, he felt. When was the last time anyone had had that look on their face because of _him_? Had anyone? Ever?

"What I've been telling you," Penny said. He could feel the mirroring grin on his own face. For twenty seconds or so they both just stood there, on a plywood ark in Kentucky, staring at each other while they were both stared at by plastic deer and rabbits and a couple of kangaroos. Then Frankie started to laugh: a _whooping_ , unbelieving laugh, turning his face to the cold sky. 

"Holy shit, man," he said. "We've got to—holy shit." 

He dragged Penny by the hand over to the ball, which at this range went right in the hole for him whether Penny was standing there cuddling him or not. Frankie didn't even let it stop moving; just grabbed it and dragged Penny toward the next hole. He was practically panting, he was so excited; this chill, unflappable guy whose blood pressure hadn't even gone up when his plane had to make an emergency landing, who got hit on by male models and yawned over it, was now so excited to play mini-golf with Penny Adiyodi that he was halfway to hyperventilating. Penny felt like he should laugh but he actually felt weirdly— _proud_ , weirdly into it. _He_ was excited, too, and even though his particular shade of cool had for a long time, Julia's experiments aside, been more resignation than confidence, he realized he didn't remember the last time he'd felt like that. _Exhilarated_. 

Frankie skidded to a stop in front of MOUNT SINAI, where a long flat strip of green widened out into an octagon, in the middle of which was a large green cone with a crater-esque indentation at the top, like a tiny volcano. Walking around the back, you could see a PVC tube coming out the back of the mountain, which dropped the ball back on the flat green. 

"Where's the hole though?" said Penny; and neither of them could figure it out until Penny climbed the mountain and looked down into the crater, while Frankie crouched down by the pipe outlet, peering inside.

"I think it's _inside_ the pipe," Frankie said. "The ball's gotta go in the crater and then fall straight down. It can't snag on the outlet tube or you're back where you started."

"Hm," Penny said. "Or worse off than when you started, since you can't get much momentum from behind the mountain. These Christian mini-golfers are devious."

As soon as it was out of his mouth he felt his back tighten; looking around for someone who might've overheard him, who might—but the two of them were still the only people around. Frankie, oblivious, had jogged back over to the starting area; Penny hunched his shoulders and followed after him, putting out his hand for Frankie to take. Frankie's face was just fucking _shining_ , still, his eyes almost disappearing into slits behind his glasses and his beard standing out from his face like it was excited all on its own. Penny tried to get his own head back in the game, but his jaw wouldn't quite unclench as he turned to watch Frankie's one-handed shot—which rolled perfectly straight down the green, tipped neatly into the crater, dropped into the hole, and, when they walked around to check the backside of the mountain, had nestled into the hole on the first try. 

Frankie turned to Penny; frowned at him. 

"You okay?" he said, and Penny's skin crawled. He took back his hand. Wiped it on his jeans. 

"Yeah. Fine."

"That's bullshit," Frankie said. "Why'd I ace the shot, then?" Penny shrugged, not quite meeting his eyes until Frankie jostled Penny with his shoulder and Penny looked down to see him squinting up at him, looking so goofy and fucking _concerned_ that Penny couldn't help smiling. 

"The _demonstration_ , Adiyodi," Frankie said, and Penny, chuckling, felt his whole back relax as he put an arm around Frankie's shoulders. 

"All right," he said, "Do-over?" 

Frankie grunted, but nodded, and they walked back together to the starting area, ball in hand. 

"Though actually," Penny said, his hand still on Frankie's back as Frankie set up his shot. "It's kind of an interesting data point, if you think about it." 

"Hm?" said Frankie. "Say more."

"I mean—there's the stakes thing," Penny said. "And the physical contact thing, right. Where we seem to get closer to canceling each other out, if we're touching. But then what if there's also a like—feelings, thing?"

Frankie stood up, and looked at him. "A feelings thing?" 

"Yeah, like: just now. You were feeling it, right? Excited, or interested or whatever. But I was distracted, I was…"

"Subject to interpellation by ideological state apparatuses," Frankie said, then just stood there like that hadn't come wildly out of left field. 

" _Wow_ , dude," Penny said. "I'll take your word on that one. Anyway, I wasn't as—in the moment, you know? _In_ what was going on between, uh, you, me, and our little blue friend, there." He scratched the back of his neck, embarrassed, but Frankie was nodding. 

"So my luck won out over your curse," he said, slowly. "Because I was the one _feeling it_ more."

"It's a theory," said Penny, shrugging; and Frankie reached out and grabbed his hand; tugged him over to stand next to him. 

"You interested in testing this theory?" he said, with such a straight face and a serious voice that Penny busted out laughing but he was nodding at the same time; and: "Experimental conditions," putting Penny's hand back on his shoulder and his upper back before turning to line up the shot. 

This time Penny paid attention: the shifting of Frankie's hoodie over his t-shirt over his skin; the warmth of him under Penny's palm. The curve of his shoulders as he took aim, and his weird little ears and it was just—it was _bananas_ , Penny was thinking, it was just wild to be standing here with his, what? Doppelgänger? Mirror-world opposite? who was protected by this crazy charmed existence, and to be able to actually _affect_ his, whatever, magic life, by just putting his hands on him. Well: putting his hands on him and _feeling interested_ about it, which—Penny wasn't having too much trouble with, now. 

He felt the swing of Frankie's torso; he felt the putter connect with the ball. This time instead of rolling straight down the green it hared off on a slight angle, so that when it got to the top of the mountain it rolled a few inches along the rim of the crater and then teetered, before rolling back down the outside of the cone, and rolling to a stop a few feet from the base of the mountain. 

"Not on purpose?" Penny asked, and Frankie smiled. Shook his head, looking out at the little blue ball halfway between the mountain and the pair of them. 

"Not on purpose," he said, and licked his bottom lip, still smiling into the sun; and suddenly Penny—

"Okay," he said, his mouth dry. "Let's go, Gallo; take your second shot." 

He kept his hand on Frankie's shoulders over the few feet toward the little hill, and when Frankie stopped he crowded up against him a little bit, one hand still on his shoulder, the other on the side of his waist, which was warm even through his couple layers of cotton. Frankie bent a little, over the putter, and Penny moved with him, pressing his palms and his wrists into the soft heat of Frankie, feeling just a little bit like he was going insane. He kept still as Frankie took aim, even though he wanted to—he didn't know. Move his hands, maybe, over the swell of Frankie's belly, just to see what would happen if he did: who would _feel it more_ then, he wondered, who'd be _more in the moment_ or whatever the fuck, if he leant down—or maybe he could start talking: _subject to interpe-what?_ , he could say, and Frankie would laugh but how would he feel, what would it make him feel? How would it affect how in-the-moment he was with whatever this game was he was playing with Penny; what could Penny do that would make his ball—

 _Thwack_ went Frankie's putter, and Penny, a second too late, realized the _flipside_ , in this situation, of standing there silently fantasizing about making _Frankie_ feel things, which was—as the ball rocketed up to the top of the cone, jumped the rim entirely, hit the rim on the other side and spun down toward the pipe, hitting the bottom with more than enough sideways momentum to snag on the outlet pipe and end up behind the mountain—that the results left Penny _himself_ with no place to hide. 

"Fuckin' hell, dude," said Frankie, laughing; and Penny could feel his face getting hot before it got through to him that Frankie's expression—he was shaking his head, looking up at Penny with _gotta hand it to you_ eyes, he was _admiring_ —

Well. Of course he was, Penny realized, starting to laugh himself. They were playing golf. It was a game, with a score, and Penny—Penny, who had totally forgotten this for the past ten minutes in favor of thinking increasingly R-rated things about his airport nemesis cum golfing science partner—might've found a way to win. 

Far be it from him, anyway, not to take credit for strategic genius when the opportunity was right there in front of him. 

"Keep up, Gallo," he said, congratulating himself that his voice sounded more or less normal. "Your game is starting to slide." 

It took Frankie another three strokes to sink the ball—standing, each time, at the base of the mountain with Penny pressed against his back, hands on his waist, wondering would happen with the shot if Penny leant down and put his mouth on Frankie's nape, just like grazing skin with teeth, just tasting him a little; but not actually doing it in case that would be, you know, counter-productive. In case it wasn't strategic to press his semi against Frankie's hip; in case that could make the ball fly up the mountain; dip into the crater and tip over the crest, rolling down the slope and bypassing the outlet valve to slide directly in the fucking hole which wasn't what Penny wanted. He wanted to prove his point, and. And to win at mini golf, which is why he was even thinking in the first place about sliding his hands under Frankie's hoodie; or licking flat-tongued down his—anyway. A hole in four put Frankie actually over par for the first time since they'd started playing. 

"Beat that, my dude," Frankie said, and Penny, face hot, took a second to realize he'd meant his points total. 

Back at the starting area he shook himself; tried to— _About-face, Adiyodi_ , he thought, but it was hard to just stop _feeling_ things on a second's notice, when you'd spent the last five minutes trying to psych yourself into feeling as much as possible. Deep breaths, Penny thought; eyes on the prize. He blinked, breathing, and thought about New York: about his broken radiator which the super was going to fix the same night Julia—and then Penny had still come home to a freezing apartment. Would probably still be coming home to a freezing apartment, though right now Frankie stood behind him fucking radiating heat, maybe feeling things and maybe not; his hot hands on Penny's waist and his hip. 

Penny's ball climbed one side of the mountain; missed the rim entirely, and fell down the other side. 

He wasn't taking it personally, or whatever. Walking over behind the mountain he thought: Frankie was onto Penny's strategy, now, so he'd be consciously trying not to lend his luck to Penny's shot. He was probably thinking about—god, whatever the fuck a guy like Frankie thought about when he was trying not to think about something else. Roger, probably. Or whoever stood in for Roger when Frankie was in New York. Not that Penny even knew Frankie lived in New York, he realized: maybe he'd been on vacation there, and actually lived in LA, with a movie star. Several movie stars. And like one of those sports cars with the doors that slide out like wings from behind the front wheels, and central A/C that probably never even thought about breaking. Or if it broke then he'd just saunter out onto the palm-lined street, still in his dressing gown, and there'd be an HVAC repair guy just happening along who would turn out to be a friend of a friend with an unexpected cancellation in his schedule, who'd fix Frankie's A/C for nothing; for just the pleasure of his company. 

The little ball climbed the mountain, slid down the crater, and clunked into the hole. Almost automatically Penny looked down at the outlet pipe: nothing came out of it.

"Hole in two," Frankie said, impressed. His face looked so open; it was hard to really resent the guy. "And here I thought I was distracting myself pretty well." 

Penny had distracted _him_ self well enough that it took a second or two to re-orient himself to the course; though standing pressed behind Frankie again on JONAH AND THE WHALE reminded him what he was doing in time to bring the guy up from a hole-in-one to a hole-in-two. 

The problem was, he admitted to himself, dragging his putter along the slats in the little half-fence surrounding DELILAH'S SCISSORS, it was hard to enjoy his own turns since both he and Frankie were doing their best to check out whenever Penny was putting. Aside from the mental-emotional whiplash of working himself up into a froth during Frankie's turns only to shut himself down on his own, it made it difficult to really _want_ to win. The fun part was the experiment; being all-in. Competing to feel the least was depressingly close to Penny's everyday life; but competing to feel the _most_ —pressing close to Frankie, concentrating on the presence of him and thinking about what it meant to be doing that and then feeling a surge of—something, _seeing the effects of that_ in Frankie's shot and knowing he was putting his all into feeling it, too. That, thought Penny, that was—

They stopped in front of DAVID'S SLINGSHOT: a wide, oval shaped green angled toward a large wishbone painted on the ground, perpendicular to the starting area. At the bottom of the Y was the mouth of a tube which would take the ball underground, then spit it out between the legs of the Y, and into the hole. To get it into the hole you had to bounce it off a rock just beyond the tube: and not too hard, or it would bounce back out of the little depression where the tube was buried. Beyond the hole was another rock, to use for ricochet or to make things difficult if your ball got stuck behind it.

"Your turn to start," Frankie said, already starting to kind of—draw into himself, shut himself down for Penny's turn, and Penny—

"We should just skip my turns," he said. 

"What?"

"Skip my turns, let's just," he waved a hand. Breathing weirdly hard; Frankie was starting to smile. "We're already playing modified rules, big time, and my turns are bumming me out. Let's just skip 'em, and compete for yours. Over par and I win; under and it's yours. Make par exactly and it's a draw."

"I like the way you think," Frankie said; Penny grinned. "Plus I've got an advantage on this hole," Frankie added, pointing to the little sign: PAR: 4.

He snugged up again behind Frankie, watching from over his shoulder as he took aim, wondering—wondering what Frankie was thinking about, to make himself feel more, be more in the moment. Penny'd known the dude less than a day, but he seemed like a pretty in-the-moment kind of a guy, generally; Penny didn't think he'd have to work much on that score. It'd be the having feelings about being there part that Frankie'd be working on, if Penny was any judge. Right now, right on the other side of—of Penny's hands, of Frankie's skin, Frankie was aiming his golf ball between the legs of the slingshot and doing his best to think about things that made him _feel more_ about being here, right now, doing this with Penny. About standing here with Penny touching him, with Penny's breath against his neck; with Penny's opposed feelings crashing right back toward Frankie's. And what would do that for Frankie? What would he—

The stroke was too hard. The ball ricocheted off the rock and bounced right out of the depression, then rolled most of the way back toward the starting area. Under his hands Penny felt Frankie actually tense; like he was actually frustrated; like he'd actually been trying and it hadn't worked; and Penny thought—maybe _Frankie_ was wondering the same thing he'd been doing; and that—he licked his lips. 

Together they shuffled forward the few feet toward the ball, which was at least still set up decently well for the tube. 

"Under par and I'll give you a blowjob," Penny said, into his ear, hoping—but Frankie just snorted. 

"Man," he said, knocking the ball toward the rock again but it went wide, missing the depression completely and veering off to one side of the green. "I do fine. I'm not about people who aren't into it." 

And Penny—(the _airport_ ; how many weeks ago did that feel like)—laughed. Followed Frankie across the green to the ball and curled back around him: hands in the pockets of his cargo pants. 

"I'm into it," he said. "I'm into—the experiment, I'm into—playing like this. If you are."

Frankie didn't answer but he did take a quick little breath and then hold it as he swung the putter and sent the ball—completely in the wrong direction, but at speed: sailing at a 120-degree angle away from the hole so that it ricocheted off the side-support behind them and to the left, then the side-support behind them and to the right, then hugging the high-ground perimeter of the slingshot along the right-hand side of the green until it dipped down on the other side of the Y, rolling obliquely down toward the hole, gathering enough speed again that when it hit the backstop rock at an angle, it bounced off, hit the side-support and rolled back toward the center, dropping, at last, neatly, into the little plastic hole. 

"Ha," said Penny. "Guess that's a yes." 

Frankie, swatting Penny's ass with one hand in retaliation, already had his phone out and was bringing up the ride share app with the other.

Penny hoped Frankie gave the driver a decent tip, because the ride home was. A lot. 

Not that they were actively making out in the lady's back seat or whatever. And not that it seemed like she'd have minded much if they did, given the glances she was shooting them in the rear-view, licking her red lips like Frankie was a salty snack and she was hoping to ditch her diet. Penny'd done worse with plenty of people in cabs and ride-shares—even with Julia, probably, WASP though she was, after that Fourth of July party out on Fire Island, though his own memory of what happened on that ride home was hazy at best. It was really just the _energy_ , wasn't it, the weirdness of it, like—

Like how Frankie could fucking—run his thumb down Penny's forearm, a tiny thing like that, and a few hours ago Penny hadn't even _wanted_ to take him to bed but now his heart would start beating because _something would happen_. He knew it would happen, and his tongue huge in his mouth to the rhythm of his beating heart the light for the train crossing started blinking and Frankie, next to him, shook his head. His tongue coming out to wet his smiling mouth; digging his thumb into Penny's pulse point. 

It was wild. He felt— _giddy_ ; he wanted—he slid his hand along Frankie's knee—leg—upper thigh; and Frankie made a little sound in the back of his throat, half a laugh and half a little sound like a grunt; and the mechanism of the boom gate on the railroad crossing, already in mid-descent, got stuck halfway down. 

"Shit," Penny said, and Frankie laughed like he couldn't quite get enough air, and "Holy shit," Penny said, again, laughing. 

"You can go," Frankie told the driver, sounding a little strangled. 

"Are you sure?" she said. "The train—"

"No," Frankie said; gasping; Penny's hand climbing high enough that his pinky brushed Frankie's cock through his shorts; his knuckles the underside of Frankie's belly, "No, I'm—very sure, you can—Jesus—"

So anyway, that was the ride home. It seemed like their driver got into it after a while, or maybe she just wanted them out of her car; whatever the reason, she was more than willing to gun it through an intersection or two by the time they got within a few miles of the hotel. And if she'd been expecting something other than a fairy-tale castle on a horse farm, she didn't make any comment, just drove them up the long drive and kept her laughter at their expense mostly under wraps as they untangled themselves from each other to get out, Frankie thumbing tip and stars into his phone. 

Luckily— _luckily!_ , Penny thought, hysterically, _luckily!_ —they didn't run into Suzanne at the front desk, or Roger coming up the stairs; and it occurred to Penny along with a kind of satisfying vertigo that that meant Frankie didn't _want_ to run into them; that he wouldn't rather be drinking Suzanne's two thousand dollar bourbon or feeling Roger's linebacker muscles but actually honestly preferred to be here, with Penny, grabbing Penny's ass on the landing making Penny shiver, full-body, and then brace for—for what turned out to be Penny's foot slipping in a puddle by the balustrade, so that he would've toppled over if Frankie hadn't caught him, hauling him upright against him. Which he could fucking do in the first place because he was waiting for it, because he knew it would happen.

"Jesus Christ," Penny said, shaky, laughing, and bent his head to nip at Frankie's neck, at the edge of his beard. "Get us upstairs, Gallo," he said, and licked up, _up_ , Frankie's earlobe in his mouth with his teeth just latching on as Frankie groaned. Penny followed him up the stairs and kept his hands on either Frankie's ass or his waist, watching little tremors go through him at the touches, and very luckily nothing else happened to impede their progress until the door was locked behind them and Frankie, mostly-naked, had Penny pushed up against it because it was literally the only free wall space in the whole weird octagonal room. 

"This is—" Frankie said; but having pulled back far enough to smear a thumb across Penny's nipple while sliding the other hand down into the vee of his open jeans, pressing the denim away from his skin with his wrist to make enough room that—

" _Urngh_ ," said Penny, _relief_ at the touch bizarrely coupled with a spike of dread, Frankie's hand warm on his cock pressed firm against his abs as across the room a _bang_ and a lightning-bolt crack spidered out across the window. 

"Bird," Frankie said, laughing; and then looked down and spit; and then ran his thumb up-down, up-down Penny's shaft. 

"In December?" Penny said. "Don't they—fuck, yeah, good"; as Frankie jerked him, and laughed. 

"Can I do you?" Frankie asked, then, and Penny liked bottoming all right but more than that he wanted to see what happened if Frankie got what he wanted; so, "Yeah," he said, "Yes," still thrusting against Frankie's palm, into Frankie's hot wet hand; and—a knock, at the door. 

"That's not fucking _lucky_ ," Penny said, groaning-laughing, scuttling behind the door and hunching over his abandoned erection as Frankie—a little out of breath, yeah, but otherwise totally goddamned serene—pulled open the door in nothing but his boxers. Well, thought Penny, hand over his giggling mouth. Whoever it is probably wants to see him naked anyway. Frankie Gallo's probably never opened the door to someone who _doesn't_ want to get in his pants; whoever it is probably came upstairs with exactly that idea; it's probably—

It was Roger. He had, in fact, come upstairs with exactly that idea. 

"Hey," Roger said; and then, taking in what Frankie wasn't wearing: " _Hey_." 

Roger's voice was only slightly muffled by the door; Penny bit his hand to keep from laughing out loud. He kept imagining the face journey Roger would have to be going on; what would be _really_ lucky is if Frankie had thought to get out his phone ahead of time so he could film it.

"We had this extra," Roger was saying, "in the kitchen, and so I thought—"

"Right on," said Frankie, cutting him off; and then he stepped forward, and took whatever Roger was carrying, and stepped back into the room. "Thanks, bro," he said, and, without slamming it but also without any particular gentleness, shut the door in Roger's face. Penny really did his best to wait for the sound of retreating footsteps before he let himself bend forward, wheezing with laughter—but he wasn't sure if he really managed it. 

Frankie plonked the tray he'd got from Roger down on the floor near the bed—the only choice, really, since even though there were like nine tables in the room, they were all tiny and their surface area was largely taken up by lamps. 

"That's—quite some kitchen leftovers," Penny said, attempting to peel off jeans, briefs, and socks in one fluid movement and instead ending up hopping on one foot trying to free his ankle from his pants. Undignified; but Frankie just snorted, crowding forward. His hands on Penny's waist, under his open shirt, were still slightly cool from the contact with the metal; Penny bit his bare shoulder as Frankie backed him toward the bed. "A whole leftover bottle of Veuve Cliquot, for one thing," Penny said, "I mean you wouldn't want the cellar to come in above quota." Frankie, in reply, slapped his ass and shoved him back onto the mattress, then followed him down: _Right_ , Penny thought: _Where were we?_

The answer was—not quite where Penny'd thought they'd been. 

"Yeah," Frankie said, "Nice," digging his thumbs into Penny's right instep just after bypassing his cock completely on the long slide down his prone body, and just before sliding his mouth back over Penny's first and second toes. Then back up. "Really—really nice, they're so. Hot."

"Is," Penny started, nonplussed, but Frankie'd just done this thing with his knuckle that absolutely should have tickled but instead felt like it'd loosened every muscle in Penny's back, fuck. "Are—wow you're. Good at that. You're really good at that," he said. Frankie moaned. Full-on moaned, from getting complimented on rubbing and sucking on Penny's feet. Outside, the sun literally came out from behind some clouds, and that was—it was wild, wasn't it. Not to have to wonder if he meant it. 

"Is this what you meant," Penny said, "when you asked if you could do me?" 

Frankie nodded, eyes closing in what looked like bliss. Dude was lying there, belly-down, half on the bed half off and like gently humping the edge of the mattress as he tried to nod and also to gag on Penny's first three toes while rolling his knuckles into the arch of Penny's foot and practically gasping for air when he finally managed to pull himself off for long enough to say, "Yeah," panting for air, "you can do me after," and then diving back down, and _moaning_ as in the room next to them someone turned up the volume on, what the hell were the odds, Boots Riley telling anyone who wanted to listen he was here to laugh, love, fuck and drink liquor and—

—and it wasn't like a foot fetish was even particularly weird; Penny thought. Sitting back. Panting, somehow. He'd been with a girl in college who'd liked his feet; who'd wanted him to put them in her mouth, in her cunt. He'd been willing enough and she'd gotten off on it but for him it'd mostly just been awkward: kind of ticklish, and not much skin-to-skin contact, not much kissing. But she'd never been so—so _shameless_ about it, so unselfconscious; so totally sure Penny'd be into it too. She'd blushed and stuttered; she'd _definitely_ never said _You can do me after_ like Penny'd be gagging to; and she hadn't—she had definitely not made minor miracles happen just from putting his toes in her body, or made his dick ache from digging her thumbs into his heels what _was_ that; she hadn't made the literal sun come out or made a fucking jar of caviar show up and then been so eager about rubbing his feet that she'd thrown the stuff on the fucking floor—

"You like that," Penny panted, and it wasn't a question; he had empirical evidence it was true. Frankie still moaned, and took more of Penny's foot into his mouth. "You like—okay," Penny said, "okay, fuck, o— _God_ —get up here," not even knowing what was coming out of his mouth. "Fuck yeah, dude, get up here"; so Frankie pulled off, his whole face flushed and sweaty, his lips swollen and spit all down his chin, and he crawled up Penny's body, which shuddered full-on when he brushed a palm against Penny's dick and then slid—down. Frankie was breathing heavy, looking like he'd been right on the edge of fucking imploding or something, so Penny bent his knee up, foot flexed; let Frankie lean into it. Press his cock into the instep of Penny's foot, and rock. He went a little cross-eyed and Penny braced for—something, something that didn't—but Penny's own skin felt like it was singing. He thought of holding Frankie around the waist at that ridiculous mini golf course, and wanted—pressed his heel into the base of Frankie's cock, and Frankie groaned. 

" _Lube_ ," he said. "Lube."

Penny started to say he hadn't brought any; hadn't exactly planned on having foot sex with a stranger in a fairy-tale hotel in Kentucky; but then—the amount of straight-up _pleasure_ Frankie'd been pumping into the room? There was probably a bottle of lube in every fussy little table they had. There was probably, thought Penny, heaving himself over on one side, stretching up to open the drawer, a whole exotic lube selection, probably the latest hipster brands or whatever, with their plastic seals still intact, and—well—there was, in fact, what looked to be a brand-new bottle, in the bedside table. Penny laughed, and laughed; and Frankie slapped his ass again and he turned over, still laughing, crooking his leg again, knee way up by his shoulder so Frankie could rub off against his foot; "Flexible" Frankie gasped; and Penny said "Yoga," pressing back against him and then Frankie, who fucking—toast probably, probably always landed butter-side up for this guy, Penny thought; and. And the best seats at baseball games, he would. They always happened to belong to a friend who, something would come up and they couldn't use them and then Frankie; and, so. So plastic packaging seals obviously _would_ open for him at the slightest fucking touch so he could slide his wet fingers along Penny's cock, tip to root and down, behind his balls, up into his ass. 

Which was another thing that wasn't usually on Penny's top-ten list of favorite sexual activities. He didn't hate it or anything; it just wasn't something that usually leapt to mind in the heat of the moment. But then Frankie, who again, just like the foot thing, hadn't even _asked_ if he liked someone's fingers in his ass, turned out to be _really a lot better at it_ than anyone else Penny'd ever tried it with, so—so that was good, Penny thought. That was great, that was—Frankie's fingers firm but not hard, wet but not so soaked he couldn't feel the softness of his skin, the—jointed movement as he slid in, _up_ —

Above them, a shifting—cracking—Penny gasping with his eyes wide open saw the ceiling crack from the base of the chandelier, which _lurched_ —

"Shit," he panted. "Fuck—come on, you want to fuck my foot? You want to shoot come all over the sole of my foot, come on, show me," which, incredibly, unbe-fucking-lievably, _worked_ , Frankie closing his eyes and _groaning_ as he rubbed his leaking cock all over the sole of Penny's foot and the crack in the ceiling—paused—in its growth. 

"Shit," Penny said again. Frankie kept fucking against his foot in jerky little movements, his whole body shaking with each jerk but his fingers somehow not pausing, not straightforwardly fucking in and out of Penny but twisting; pulsing; his knuckles just rubbing at Penny's rim and the pads of his fingers teasing at his prostate shooting little—sharp-colored—shudders up his spine sparking in his eye sockets wanting to—the chandelier _groaning_ —

"That won't fall on us if it breaks will it," Penny gasped, but it was too late, it was already too late, he was coming in bright hard bursts before he even decided—" _Holy fuck_ "—whether it was worth the risk to touch his cock. Above them, over the rushing in his ears and the sounds of his own whimpering moans, the ceiling splintered; _cracked_ ; and Frankie rolled them to the side but it wouldn't have, it wouldn't have hit them anyway, Penny realized; coming back to himself covered in plaster dust and his own come; it had missed the foot of the bed by a solid foot. 

"Jesus," he said. "Oh my god." 

"Well," Frankie said. "I'll send them money for a new one. It was kind of a tacky chandelier anyw—what?" as Penny, weakly, punched at his chest, laughing. 

"Yeah," he said, "Sure. The chandelier. I was actually talking about the fucking phenomenal sex, asshole." 

Frankie sat back against the pillows. Chuckled. 

"I mean," Penny pressed on. "I'm not even usually into that, but. Wow." 

Frankie just—went still. Turned to him, slowly. His features all bunched up in the middle of his face.

"What do you mean?" he said. "Not into—?"

"No, look," Penny said. "You _definitely_ do not need to worry; I have zero complaints. Jesus fucking Christ. Give me a minute and I'll see about you." 

"No, but—you're not into—what?" 

For a big guy, Frankie just then looked weirdly small. Penny regretted saying anything; he hadn't thought it'd be controversial. 

" _You_ know," he said. "Feet, ass-play. I mean it's _fine_ , obviously, I would have said—I've just. I haven't been with that many people who are into that stuff. Never been with someone as good at it as you. That's all." 

Frankie looked even more at sea. Penny had the sinking, and honestly kind of annoying, feeling that the chandelier was the least of his worries. 

"Most people," he told Frankie, "would take it as a compliment if someone, y'know, said they'd blown their minds sexually or whatever, by—"

"No," he said, "I know, it's just. Who isn't into that stuff? I thought like. That's what everyone was into." 

"I mean it's not like it's insanely niche or anything, but uh—no, it's not, like—a sexual universal." He cleared his throat; Frankie was still frowning. "But I liked it! Obviously." 

"So what _are_ they into, then?" he asked, and Penny—did not laugh. He didn't. Frankie said, "What are _you_ into?" and Penny totally refrained from making any kind of joke about how the unorthodox timing on that one, given the dude has just made him come without touching his dick. 

"Uh," he said, instead. "I dunno, man, sucking? Fucking? My tastes are pretty mainstream, honestly, not that I'm _opposed_ or whatever, to—what?" 

Because the look Frankie was giving him was—weird. He didn't exactly know how to read it, but he was suddenly really aware that after everything that'd just happened he was still somehow wearing his undone shirt. There was this slow-building, incredulous realization happening at the back of his mind that was making all the hair on his nape prickle up, and was it—was it _possible_ that a guy in his 20s, who had plainly had a _lot_ of sex—

"Show me," Frankie said, and he shifted, kind of—awkwardly, actually. It was the first time Penny'd seen him move awkwardly. Like he wasn't really even sure where he wanted to move his body _to_ , just that it should probably be some different place or position than lying on his back on the mattress, where he'd rolled to get away from the chandelier. 

"Or you could just finish rubbing off on my feet," Penny said. "That's cool, man." 

"No, come on," Frankie said. Shifting restlessly on the blue-and-white duvet cover. "I'm—curious." 

So—fair enough, Penny thought, shrugging. He rolled onto his hands and knees and sort of—kissed Frankie's chest. Bit at his nipples; dragged his lips along the warm salt tang of Frankie's belly, headed down. Frankie's skin kept jumping under his mouth and his hands and Frankie was watching him with these wide-open eyes that in a less laid-back person would have been almost mistrustful, and—the thing was, thought Penny, letting Frankie's cock rub up against his cheek, rest a second on his open lower lip before turned his head and licked him, flat tongued, root to tip. The thing was: having the declaration that in bed you usually stick to the classics met with, like—baffled, slightly wary fascination, and a request for a demonstration, was that you suddenly felt weirdly self-conscious about doing something totally normal like _giving a dude a blow-job_. Frankie's hands were curled in the fabric of the duvet in this strange tentative way, and he was still doing that aimless shifting thing with his hips; it was honestly hard to tell if it meant Frankie was into it and wanted more, or if he was just having a hard time getting comfortable. Penny breathed; slid down; swallowed; slid up and breathed; his mouth wet and his rhythm supposedly familiar and Frankie was staring down at him with a level of focus that would, as a general rule, be flattering when he was blowing a guy but Penny was—frankly Penny was hamster-wheeling a little bit on the implications of all this. Like—if Frankie Gallo knew what he liked and what he liked was sucking on feet and fingering assholes, and because he was chronically and inescapably lucky he just happened upon other people who were into those things too, then was this sloppy, kind of self-conscious effort of Penny's literally— _literally_!—the first blow-job he'd ever gotten? But that was— _can't be_ , Penny thought, and breathed, and took him deeper: can't be, or how would he know whether BJs should go on the list? But maybe—pulling back, tightening his lips around to give little _pulls_ just to the head of Frankie's cock—maybe that was part of it, the fact the guy'd never had to go through the hassle of trying out something the fucking universe, or whatever, already knew he wouldn't like. Frankie groaned, hand on Penny's shoulder, and Penny sped up, took him deep again. Was the fact—if it even _was_ a fact—that Frankie'd never had a blowjob, in and of itself evidence that he didn't, and wouldn't, like them? How did the whole thing work, Penny wondered, flattening his tongue against him, slurping at him, hand gripping his base. Was the feet-and-fingering routine just confirmation bias? The first two acts Frankie'd happened to especially like, and they turned him into a magnet for other people who were into them? But then: was it really _lucky_ to get locked out of trying new things like that? Maybe the second-level implication was that Frankie didn't like novelty, that he didn't _like_ change, that he liked what he liked and he liked things to stay the same; and so Penny, choking himself mildly on Frankie's cock, was subjecting him not only to one thing that he was practically guaranteed to hate (blowjobs) but also like a whole meta _category_ of things that—

"Fuck, oh—shit, _fuck_ ," said Frankie, and Penny pulled off just as Frankie started jizzing all over his fist. Still with a vague feeling like he had something to apologize for, Penny sat up into his hips and swung his right leg back around so Frankie could ride out his aftershocks with his cock pressed between Penny's palm and the sole of his right foot. 

"Well," Frankie said, panting. "Damn." 

Penny sat back, not sure what to say. He maneuvered himself around so his back was to the headboard, too: lifted up one of the pillows to fluff it up and stick it behind him—and right there, wedged between the mattress and the headboard, was a little roll of bills, apparently left there by the people before them. 

"How much?" Frankie said. 

"Uh," Penny said. "Looks like eleven bucks." He stared down at it. "Guess I got free mini-golf entry after all."

Frankie started chuckling. His eyes were closed; he was resting his head back on the headboard like his neck was limp. A tightness eased a little, in Penny's chest.

"Does this—was it okay, then?" Penny said, but Frankie sure _looked_ okay; and now his eyes came open, sleepily, to meet Penny's gaze. 

"I can see the appeal," he told him; and Penny, unreasonably fucking relieved—

"Oh," he said. "You can see the appeal."

"Yeah bro."

Penny still holding the pillow, socked Frankie with it instead of sticking it behind his own back: Frankie squawked, then laughed. 

"He can see the appeal of a blowjob, ladies and gentlemen," Penny said, as they wrestled for the pillow, and Frankie laughed. "Give the man a prize."

They napped a little, on top of the duvet still covered in plaster dust, Frankie's face half-mashed into the pillow they'd been using to pummel each other until they more or less passed out. When Penny came to in the mid-afternoon it was with a panicked _start_ like falling and the conviction that—

"Suzanne," he gasped, while Frankie made a sleepy _Bwa?_ noise into the pillow. "The room," he explained. "We didn't—we don't even know if it's free for another day; we didn't tell her we wanted another night."

"Hm," Frankie said. "It'll probably work itself out." 

Which, of course, it did: chandelier and everything. 

"That is _so kind of you_ ," Suzanne said, beaming at Frankie over the gleaming front desk as Penny apologized for the damage, and Frankie offered to pay for a new fixture. "I can send you the bill for the labor but would you believe it, there is already a replacement for that old thing, out in the barn we use for storage. And the room is just no trouble at all? The people who cancelled were staying for three nights. So!" She smiled sunnily. "Continue to make yourself at home." 

It had even just-so-happened that the maid had waited, that day, to deal with the top room last, even though she usually did it first; so by the time Penny and Frankie wandered down to the hotel restaurant for a late lunch, she was only just poking her head down the hallway. 

Penny felt like he should find all this more mind-blowing, but his head still felt muzzy from the nap, and his stomach was rumbling. In the heat of the moment, upstairs, there'd been like a hundred things he'd wanted to ask Frankie about the ins and outs of all this, how his whole luck deal worked. But lowering himself down into one of the cushioned chairs at the honey-wood tables in the little restaurant, the inside of his head was honestly pretty quiet for once. He rubbed his eyes; his face. Outside the window to his right, the weak winter afternoon sunlight slanted down on a side-yard lightly dusted with snow. Occasional tufts of long grasses came up between the naked, haphazardly-planted trees which looked like—apples, or peaches or something, he didn't know. They'd built a coop against the far side of the fence-rails, but it was empty. The chickens must come inside in the winter. Resting his chin on his fist Penny imagined them: cozy and bedded down in whatever indoor chicken accommodations looked like. Warm. 

Frankie went off to find the men's room and Penny yawned again. Squinched his eyes hard shut and then blinked them wide open. He hadn't even noticed the waiter bringing them menus, but some had appeared by his water glass. A bougie take on a Southern-food lunch: sweet potato beignets; deviled eggs with capers and marinated cherry tomatoes. Penny was debating between the crispy catfish basket with blue cheese celery slaw, and the hoecake burger on brioche with herb-salted fries, when the waiter came by to refill their waters. Penny was looking up to thank the guy when someone passed behind him; jostled him; he stumbled, reaching out to steady himself on the table, and knocked Penny's glass into his lap. Penny, jumping up to avoid the worst of the splash, tipped over the whole table. With a long scrape and a clatter all the little condiment containers and the ceramic napkin rings slid to the floor; Penny stumbled trying to catch the edge of the table and stepped on his water glass, which splintered. "Sorry, shit, sorry," he was saying, as always, reaching down to—he didn't know what, corral the little lake of water that was collecting; or gather the glass into a pile—and a shard sliced the meat of his palm open just as Frankie wandered back from the bathroom. 

"Dude," he said. 

"I know," said Penny, "shit, sorry—"

"I was gone for like five minutes," Frankie said, and stood there, hovering over the mess, as the waiter unfolded one of the napkins to knot around Penny's bleeding hand.

It wasn't a huge deal or anything. Kind of funny, honestly, once they were settled at another table a little way away from the wreckage, with an alternate view on the snowy side-yard. The waiter, apologetic, came back with real bandages for Penny's hand, fetched from the first-aid kit in the kitchen; and they ended up comping him his catfish basket and fancy fries. 

"So maybe it was all your influence after all," Penny said. But Frankie didn't answer.

Frankie hadn't said much, honestly, all through their lunch. Penny didn't think that much of it; it was kind of nice to be able to sit in silence with someone, even if his zen post-sex state about the trees and the chickens had been dented a little by the comedy of errors with the table and the water glass. But when he'd powered through his burger and was halfway through his fries, he glanced up to see Frankie—watching him. Watching, specifically, his bandaged hand. The steak frites Frankie'd ordered just sitting there, getting cold. 

"What's up?" Penny said. Frankie kind of shook himself. Looked down at his lunch, and stabbed his steak with his fork. 

"Nothing," he said. Sliced; chewed; swallowed. "I'm fine." Sliced; chewed. "I'm not the one who can't go two seconds without, like, grievous bodily harm—"

"It's not a big deal," Penny told him. "It's just a cut; it's—"

"It's _all the time_ ," Frankie said. His steak knife clattered against his plate and he took a deep, jagged breath, staring down at his lunch. "It happens—you just _live_ like this, don't you. It's c-constant, it never _stops_ —" as Penny thought: did _Frankie_ just _stutter_ and Frankie barreled on, "— you're just— _always_ getting hurt or having things— _fall_ on you or make you sick or—it's fucked up, man, it never stops."

Admittedly Penny had only known the guy for like twenty-four hours, but this was still—alarming. It was _Frankie_ ; he'd faced an emergency plane landing and a swarming airport full of pissed-off Christmas travellers with a low-key cheerful, perma-stoned serenity. To see him worked up like this about a cut on Penny's hand, or even about having to roll over in bed to avoid a falling chandelier, was super unsettling. 

"Should we not have fucked?" Penny blurted out; and then, in a reflex reaction hearing it come out of his mouth, glanced around, shoulders hunching up—but they were all right, he thought. Despite there being no room at the inn there were plenty of empty tables in the restaurant, and no one immediately surrounding them. It was a weird time for lunch, Penny guessed; and rubbed his face.

"See?" Frankie said, his eyes wide. "You're always expecting something b-bad to happen. You can't even mention a hookup in a public place without—"

"Look," Penny said, with that old horrible clenching in his gut. All those drag-out fights with Ashley and Malik and Lanying and—everyone, really, before Julia'd come along with her unshakeable confidence that, first, there was something wrong with him, and that, second, together they could fix it. But with everyone, before her, there'd come a point where he'd have to downplay; to pretend. To say, like he was saying right now, "The waiter knocked over a table; I cut my hand. It could happen to anyone. Nothing that's happened to me is like— _radically awful_ or anything. Anyone might puke on a plane; that's why they have sick bags. Anyone might—get massively shit-faced the night after their fiancée leaves them for a hot-shot academic career; anyone might—"

"Learning you were just _left by your fiancée_ doesn't make me feel better about your, like, life situation!" 

"—get served the wrong drink by a bartender; anyone might get a plane seat next to an asshole who wants to watch British comedy with no headphones—"

"That's bullshit and you know it," Frankie growled. He was leaning forward toward Penny, actually doing that thing, that poking-the-table-with-his-pointer-finger-for-emphasis thing that people did, and which was about sixteen times more intense than Penny would ever have expected from the guy even if his hand hadn't also been shaking. "Anyone could have—increasingly bizarre accidents happen to sabotage their golf game just when it seems like they might score? Anyone could w-walk away bleeding from—sitting down at a table to drink some water? Anyone could make birds fucking—stun themselves on windows and chandeliers fall from ceilings because they got hard in their—hotel room doing shit they're not even into?" 

"I was into it!" Penny said, half-shouting; and forcibly stopped himself from turning around to check if anyone was staring. Lowering his voice, he said: "And it's not crazy to be a little cautious about discussing the wild gay sex you're having in a quaint B&B in the South."

"None of it's crazy!" Frankie said, and if his voice wasn't as loud as Penny's had been, it was getting there. "That's my— _point _, you c-constantly expect bad shit to—to _happen_ to you because bad shit is c-constantly _happening_ to you, and it's—"__

____

"Hey," Penny said, with his chest kind of—dropping, because Frankie was. He was actually in like legitimate _distress_ ; like verging on something Penny would call _panic_ in anyone else: there the dude sat, fucking stuttering, halfway to yelling, while that shaking Penny'd seen in his hand a few minutes before had morphed into a like, full-body shiver, out of control, his teeth chattering and his hands pressed to the polished dark-wood table-top like he needed to cement himself to reality due to the all-out _freakout_ he was apparently having in this high-class hotel restaurant in Kentucky about Penny needing a fucking bandage for his hand. It wasn't even his dominant hand, for fuck's sake. It wouldn't even really get in the way. 

__

"I just," Frankie was saying. "I d-don't know—how you can just. You keep just. Getting up every morning and like—"

__

"I mean," Penny said. "Some mornings." 

__

"—doing your— _thing_ , doing the things you g-gotta do, when just. _Everyone you meet_ is trying to—to fuck you up."

__

"To be fair," Penny said, "they're not really _trying_. They're just doing their thing and happen to fuck me up along the way. And hey, man, you probably get that; it's exactly like your thing, except—"

__

"And j-just," Frankie went on, " _everywhere_ you go," like Penny hadn't opened his mouth; dude was starting to make a kind of retching noise in the back of his throat that made Penny worry he was about to have a fit or something, like he seemed in genuine danger of—Penny didn't know, did he? _He_ hadn't been the person doing triage and risk assessment on other peoples' emotional crises, not for years. But Frankie sure seemed in genuine danger of— _something_ , and so Penny, half-rising to his feet, pushing his chair out and standing up like some kind of super awkward bird—

__

"Hey," he said again. "Let's get out of here."

__

"Get out of—," Frankie spluttered, and made that noise again. "We just— _c-came_ from—"

__

"Take a walk," Penny said, in a rush. Gesturing to the little side-yard and the split-rail fence and the woods beyond. "Let's just—there's still some daylight left, come on. Let's. Take a walk, shake it off. Yeah?"

__

Frankie looked up at him, still trembling all over but with his eyes starting, a little, to clear. 

__

"Yeah," he said, and pushed his hands down hard into the table-top, levering himself to his feet. "Yeah, okay. Okay."

__

The waiter sort of materialized for Frankie without him really doing anything; so apparently freaking the fuck out didn't impair the guy's luck magic. Anyway they put lunch on their room tab, and headed out into the late afternoon. Frankie had stopped making that horrible half-retching sound but he was still shaking, and Penny was low-key dreading what would happen if they ran into Roger or someone as they passed the stables. But aside from a blonde guest and her blonde daughter cantering around the little paddock, no one crossed their paths. Penny wondered if the lack of people they kept encountering was thanks to him or to Frankie. Or possibly it was just a thing that was happening, out here in the world. 

__

Beyond the side-yard was a little patch of a meadow and then the woods thickened up pretty quick. The dry winter grass with its dusting of snow crunched underfoot; and besides that irregular crunching and the fading sounds of the mother-daughter riding lesson there was a minute or so where the only sound was their breath: Penny's as even as he could make it with Frankie's still fast and shallow and bad. 

__

"I never liked horses," Penny said, for something to fill the silence. "I think my parents were relieved I never wanted to like—ride, or sail, or kayak or whatever."

__

"Yeah, you'd be k-killed," Frankie, said. "You'd be—"

__

"Well," Penny said. "I don't know. It's not always that bad. Sometimes it's kind of convenient. Es—one of my moms, she took me to the track once, when I was a kid." 

__

"She—how's that not bad?" Frankie said, sounding—almost offended, actually; but he was definitely distracted from his meltdown, which is what Penny'd been going for. "What, did—the horse she bet on probably twisted an ankle in the middle of the race, or—or dropped down dead with the jockey still on its back, or—"

__

"Got disqualified after the finish," Penny said. "For doping. Well, that was the first one we bet on; the second one did get some kind of minor injury. I felt bad about that. The third one just wandered off halfway through the race to go have a snack in the field. Only: it wasn't really my mom's money; she'd come there with her ex." 

__

Frankie stopped, the silence pooling in the places his crunching footsteps would have filled. Penny stopped too; watched his face as he worked it out.

__

"Your mother took you to the track," he said, "to get revenge on her ex?" 

__

"Only kind of a revenge taster," Penny said. "Revenge Lite. The guy was a bag of dicks; he deserved way worse than losing a few bucks at the track, for how he'd treated Eswari when they were dating. Still. It was pretty funny. His _face_ , by the time that racehorse just—slowed down, and slowed down, and then stopped. And then just sort of— _wandered off_. It wasn't so much the losing that bothered him, I don't think: the bizarreness of the whole thing was more just humiliating than anything." 

__

"I—wow," Frankie said. 

__

"She took me out for a big pasta dinner and an ice cream sundae afterward. It wasn't like my labors went unrecognized. Plus we laughed like hell at that bastard. What a cock."

__

Penny kicked a branch out of the path. In honesty he didn't even remember what Jack—John?—was supposed to have done. Just how amazing it'd been to feel like _he_ , Penny, was the key element, for once: that _he_ was the thing that was making the plan work, that it needed him in particular and no one else. That in this very particular, engineered scenario, he was actually an _asset_ rather than a liability. If Eswari had been—whatever, a hired assassin, or some kind of Dark Side recruiter or something, he'd have been an easy mark for her that night. He wouldn't even have needed the ice cream: give him that feeling of being _essential_ and he'd have infiltrated any enemy base she had in mind. Seven years old or not.

__

"She sounds like a character," Frankie said, and Penny jumped a little bit coming back to himself. Then he heard it again on replay, and Frankie sounded a lot more like himself, none of the hyperventilation. No morbid references to Penny's propensity for personal injury, so. Good enough, he thought. 

__

"She's great," he said. "They're both—they got a tough assignment, you know? But they do not back down from a challenge, my mothers." 

__

Frankie chuckled. Their steps had fallen into a kind of rhythm with each other: crunch-crunch, crunch, crunch, hugging the path of the white-crusted wooden fence that wound back into the woods. The long shadows striped the little path, freckled with pebbles and snowless spots among the white. 

__

"I didn't really _realize_ ," Penny said. "You know—well I'm sure _you_ know. Kids probably always assume however they're living is normal and just, like. Automatically happens, to everyone." 

__

"I never got why anyone wouldn't like doing group projects in school," Frankie said. "I was always assigned shit I was already interested in or knew a lot about, and my teammates were always on time with the parts I didn't like to do."

__

"Exactly." Penny laughed. "Exactly, man. You assume your gig is the only gig, and however much effort you put in to deal with other people, that's the amount everyone puts in dealing with you. And you don't realize you're wrong until—well for me it was this vacation we took." He cleared his throat. "All of us, my moms and my brother and me. We went out to St. Augustine in August. Spend a week on the coast before school starts, you know. Beat the heat, or whatever. I was—I don't know." Brian had still looked like a little kid, he remembered, and there wasn't that big a gap between them; so Penny'd been—. "Eleven, twelve? Anyway." 

__

Their breaths fogged out: almost in synch, now. Frankie glanced over at him: interested; casual. He didn't interrupt him. 

__

"In my defense, you kind of _have_ to have some kind of disaster plan, if you live in Florida," Penny told him. "It's just that I never realized that Miriam and Eswari—if contingency planning were basketball, they take it from shooting hoops in your dad's driveway to the fuckin' NBA. They're like the…" 

__

"—Shaqs of emergency preparedness?" Frankie said.

__

"More like—more like the LeBron Jameses of it," said Penny. "It's the versatility thing, right? Because—and this is what I didn't really get until this one St. Augustine trip, but—okay, you're going to the Florida beach, in August. Anyone with the time and money can go above and beyond on the hurricane kit, right. It's hurricane _season_ , you could guess one might come along. Ditto alligators, whatever. They're around. But what actually _happens_ —"

__

He stopped; leaned back against the fence so he could look at Frankie; talk with his hands. Frankie's face was open; grinning; one hand holding the opposite elbow, the other one coming up to stroke his smiling chin. 

__

"So we get there," Penny said. "Temps in the nineties for weeks beforehand, but as soon as we show up it starts raining. And like a _cold_ rain, super weird. Fair enough; standard family vacation disappointment. They've got extra warm clothes for us and those little packs of cocoa, and Miriam's coworker had loaned her a bunch of boardgames we hadn't tried, and so we honestly had this great few days, you know, game-playing and shit, listening to the rain come down. 

__

"And then we all start to get cabin fever, right? So we go out to the movies. Wading through the downpour to this old-school cinema, and then when we all get into our seats the projectionist is having tech issues. They keep playing the first five minutes of the movie and then it stalls out. They restart it, rinse and repeat. At which point, _Miriam_ is like, come with me. And she takes out a flashlight, like—out of her purse. And she leads us down to the bottom of the theater, and behind the screen, where there's this whole like, network of back rooms. And she starts filling us in on the history of this movie theater: how way back in the day it used to be an apothecary shop owned by this Chinese guy and his half-white brother who might've actually been his brother and might have been— _something else_ , you know—and how they got to be respected members of the community even way back then, and you could still sort of make out some of the old flyers and shit the two of them'd had pasted up on the walls, in this back room. _All_ this info: this is how things _always were_ with my moms. And it just—hit me, all of a sudden, how—this was before smart phones, you know? Miriam had to have thought, before we ever left for the beach: okay, we hope it'll be sunny, but what if it rains. Then, what about if it rains for four days and we get tired of being inside. Then she had to research movie theaters. Then she had to think to herself, but what if something goes wrong with the film. Then she had to find a theater with some kind of alternative point of interest, right? And she had to get deep into this research about it, and memorize this huge amount of stuff about it. All for something that was so unlikely, going in—I mean we'd all thought, cool, we'll spend a week hanging out on the beach. There had to have been _dozens_ and dozens of wild contingencies like that, and on each one she'd just. Put in the work."

__

"Shit, man," Frankie said. 

__

"Yeah," Penny said. "And then—after I came to this realization about the movie theater, it just kept hitting me. All these things the two of them had to think of, and how they made it seem—not even easy, but like. _Fun_. Boat springs a leak? Miriam brought inflatable pool toys: suddenly the whole thing is _more_ fun than boating. Spooky shit always happening around your son? Take him on a ghost tour: suddenly a bunch of strangers are getting the times of their life, too. Even the stuff they didn't think of, like—there was this time on that trip, I was balancing on the wall of the fort, and I fell like ten feet, onto sand. But then Eswari climbed down to get me and by the time she got to the bottom I'd forgotten all about the fall and just wanted her to show me how she'd done it. Suddenly we're having a rock-climbing lesson outside the Castillo de San Marcos. It was _wild_ , realizing how—how far they came, you know? To meet me." He laughed. "And then because I was fourteen years old I immediately forgot again and went back to being an asshole to them most of the time, but. Occasionally it'd come back to me."

__

"They knew, then," Frankie said. "About you, they—like, consciously realized."

__

"Yeah," Penny said. "I mean, they're muggles but they were pretty woo-woo to begin with. And they'd fought the state so hard to adopt the two of us, so. They just kind of rolled with it, when it seemed like their older son was some kind of cursed satanic changeling."

__

Frankie laughed. He was chewing on the inside of his mouth, staring down at the snowy path. 

__

"Your family?" said Penny. "What do they think about you?"

__

Frankie shrugged, making some kind of little sound that meant nothing. For a minute Penny thought he just wasn't going to answer, but then, "Man," he said, "Your boating story. I'd forgotten—when I was a kid, I was maybe—eight or nine? We drove out to Hosmer Lake, out in central Oregon. Which was like a seven-hour drive from where I was from, just outside Tacoma. The whole extended family was there, and my uncle Pete got this idea he would teach me to canoe. I thought it was such a drag at first, but my mom's all: _go on, you'll like it, it'll be good for you_. So we went out together, he taught me how to stroke, and how to steer, and—you know I was only just sort of figuring out that like. The things that happened to me were weird. Good, but weird, and I was just starting to get that that kind of shit didn't just happen to other people. And that when it happened to me people could be fucked-up about it, you know?"

__

"Yeah," said Penny, thinking of the whole stranded lounge in Lexington International. How people would react to knowing what Frankie could do. 

__

"It was like—it was confusing for a while there, at school. Everybody usually liked me, I just got used to it; and then there was this kid Joshua. He had it _out_ for me, man, and he made himself a total social outcast because of it: he'd steal my lunch and then some other asshole who wanted to get in with me would beat him up, plus of course someone else would've happened to come with two lunches that day and give me one, or they'd be giving out free pizza in the lunchroom that day. Or Joshua'd put NAIR in my gym shampoo in the locker room, and I'd end up starting a whole trend for shaved heads; then the other kids would mock him for still having his dreads. I thought it was so weird at the time, I mean: I'd never done anything to him, right. Plus he was another fat mixed kid, like me; I thought we should have been friends."

__

"He was jealous," Penny said. 

__

"Yeah, and like—of _course_ , of course he was, but at that age it was so confusing. I was only just starting to really _see_ the whole tangle of all that shit, and what I could see I couldn't make sense of. But then, being out on the lake with Pete, it was just like—super simple cause and effect. You moved the paddle and the boat went forward through the water that you were like—right next to; the little bonking noises of the canoe going through the reeds. You didn't _need_ luck; you didn't—I mean I'm sure bad luck could have fucked it up"—and Penny laughed—"but _good_ luck didn't factor in, really. My mom was right; I loved it. I still love to get out on the water. Take a joint and a book and just float."

__

"What's up with that uncle now?" Penny said. "Pete?" 

__

Frankie shrugged. "Set him up with a big house in a super gentrified area of Seattle," he said. "Sometimes he emails, when he wants—whatever. I'm not that close with my family, now. It's cool, I've got—it's easier to chill with people who kind of get where you're coming from. Magicians, and—uh, well. Magicians." 

__

The light was getting low, now; the shadows not only long but losing contrast with the stripes of fading sunshine. They didn't turn around, though. It was relaxing, wasn't it, tromping through the woods, and he'd been watching out the car window last night, he knew even if they let it get all the way dark the moon off the snow'd be enough light to see by. If it wasn't there was always their phone flashlights. Hell, Frankie'd probably _happened_ to stick a mag light into his pocket without even thinking about it. In a sudden wash of fondness for the guy, Penny slung an arm across Frankie's shoulders. 

__

"I get that," he said. "For sure."

__

"What about your—what's the deal with your fiancée? Former fiancée?" Frankie said. 

__

"Julia," said Penny, and cleared his throat. 

__

"Obviously if you don't want to talk about it," Frankie was saying; but "No," Penny said, "it's cool." And it _was_ cool, or—obviously not _cool_ , not like he was suddenly over the moon about how everything had gone down, or whatever; but he realized he hadn't had a chance to talk to anyone in New York, after it happened. Hadn't even called anyone. Just gone on a bender and showed up for the flight they'd booked together and—. And blown up repeatedly at some poor asshole who just wanted to watch his show in peace. 

__

"Um," Penny said. "We'd been together a couple years? The thing with Julia was—she believed me, which was— _amazing_ , I just. Before we met, everyone before her, muggles and magicians, it didn't matter: who'd heard of congenital bad luck? So with most people, either they'd say I was imagining it, or they'd start getting deeply creeped out and _I_ 'd insist they were imagining it, just to keep the peace. I mean I didn't have any explanation, even if I admitted they were onto something, you know? As far as Jules could ever tell, it's not an after-market curse, it wasn't put on me by anyone; I just came this way. So that was the party line: there was nothing up. And then whoever it was would get like. Gradually bummed out when things never went our way. And pretty soon after that they'd take off. But with Julia—she got it right away, you know? Before I even said anything. Well, she's like a genius-level magician; she observed it on her own after just a few days."

__

"Hm," said Frankie. "Maybe that's why you cottoned on to my luck so fast." 

__

"Yeah, maybe," Penny said. "Anyway, her thing was: we can fix it. _She_ could fix it. She had all these theories, it was really, like—exciting to watch, you know? She'd just light up with the excitement of this fucking… research project. She developed this whole system, of charting the times of each separate 'incident' of bad luck in an overarching 'episode.' She used to get so _psyched_ about all the possibilities for how she could fix whatever it is that makes me… like this." He cleared his throat. "Anyway, turned out she couldn't after all, so. She's off to fix something easier than me. Like pan-national nuclear disarmament." 

__

"Damn, dude," said Frankie; and Penny laughed. It _hurt_ , but—the laughing felt good. The cold air in his lungs. He thought of Julia's beautiful serious drawn-together little face; how it'd used to crack open with excitement; how her hands would flutter at waist level like she just couldn't hold all the things she wanted to tell him. When was the last time that had happened? He couldn't remember. No time recently. 

__

"We were gonna go to LA," he told Frankie, "to get away before the real bulk of the wedding planning set in and everything got crazy. It cut me off at the fucking knees, when she told me, but—I guess it shouldn't have. Things had been pretty grim for a while. I think she'd really _realized_ , like really taken it on board, six months ago or something, that what she saw was what she'd get. She wasn't going to be able to cure me or—make me right. Whatever."

__

Penny took a deep, aching-cold breath; and let it out. "Anyway," he said. "That's me. Why were you going to LA?" 

__

"Ohhhh," Frankie said, drawing it out like a sigh. "I won another trip to Disneyland. They come around every couple years. I gave the last few away to neighborhood kids, but this one was non-transferrable. So I was like, why not. I didn't have any other plans for Christmas; nothing until the big New Year's party I throw every year at my place in the Village." He stopped on the path, then, taking half a step back so he could look up at Penny, with Penny's hand still resting on his shoulder. "You should come, man," he said. "It's wild."

__

"Yeah?" said Penny. "Okay, yeah, I'd like that"; and felt around in his pockets for his phone. Frankie got his out; asked for Penny's number, and then the buzz in Penny's hand: Frankie's contacts, party spot included.

__

It was fully dark now, but the white-capped fence would be easy enough to follow deeper into the woods. Still, ever since Frankie's story—

__

"Things without a luck element, huh?" Penny said.

__

"What?" said Frankie.

__

"Like the canoe. Things where luck doesn't really factor in." Frankie shot him a quizzical look but Penny was remembering—a flyer, hadn't it been in the hotel lobby? Hadn't it been for tonight?

__

"I have an idea," he said, and then: "A lot of times my ideas end in disaster; you probably should not trust me in the least." 

__

But Frankie just laughed, and slapped him on the back; and Penny turned their steps back toward their digs.

__

So they trekked back through the woods; changed clothes; called a Lyft and rode back into town. The night before Christmas, Lexington was all done up: their driver took them past the big downtown tree, lit up with electric blues and greens and studded with oversized baubles like swirled-marble soccer balls; and clustered alongside it a little village of merchant tents where last-minute shoppers milled around in search of suitable knick-knacks for stocking stuffers. Just beyond the shopping village was an ice rink—Penny caught glimpses of a kid falling down on the ice; a couple in their 20s breezing past her, holding hands—and then they were past the open square, cruising on down the main drag, the little wreaths around the old-school street lamps ringed with white light, and finished with red bows. 

__

"Not taking me ice-skating?" Frankie said. "The thrill is gone, Adiyodi." 

__

Penny snorted. Looked over to see him doing a fake-sad face, so Penny said, "You asshole," and slugged him gently on the shoulder as the Lyft swung to the left. The rushing of an overpass, and then a two-lane road in what looked like a semi-industrial area. The blank backs of squat brick buildings faced the road. 

__

"My mistake," Frankie said. "You're abducting me." 

__

"With your luck," said Penny, "the goon I'd hire to guard you would be an old buddy." 

__

Frankie mmm'ed. "Or he and I'd turn out to be into the same thing. _Shared interests_ , that's sometimes how it goes."

__

"Is that what you call it," said Penny, and it was Frankie's turn to punch him as the Lyft turned another corner, then maneuvered around a couple amazing-smelling food trucks to pull to a stop in front of what had plainly once been a mechanic shop: the six auto bays converted into five big sectioned plate-glass windows—roll-up-able, probably, in the summer, so the whole place would catch the breeze—and one double entry door with little diamond-shaped windows. Bundled-up twenty-somethings huddled around the outdoor furniture, smoking. When Penny opened the right-hand door, a sea of dings, clangs, and clinking tokens greeted them, all bathed in neon lights.

__

"Yeah hi," he said, to the guy working the check-in desk—white guy with a man-bun, blue button-down rolled to the elbows, knotted hemp bracelet, suspenders, there goes the neighborhood—"two entries for the dance contest?"

__

The flyer Penny'd remembered from the hotel lobby had made an impression on him because he'd thought, first, _On Christmas Eve?_ and then: _Hell yeah, on Christmas Eve, probably the best thing happening in this town_. And then he'd been distracted by the whole back-and-forth with Suzanne, and hadn't thought about it anymore, but—could be fun, right? The front-desk hipster took their ten bucks and gave them the tipped-up head-nod: live music started at 10 across the street; bar was to their left, Skee-ball to their right, and the Dance Dance Revolution consoles were straight back, couldn't miss 'em, and good luck to them both.

__

"No luck," Penny told him. "Just pure skill, right here." 

__

"That right?" the guy drawled, looking him up and down; and Frankie, laughing and shaking his head, put a hand on Penny's back to steer him forward into the crowd. 

__

Inside the crowd was largely more of the same: bougie twentysomethings, mostly white but mixed enough for comfort, getting merry on cocktails and microbrews. Penny and Frankie signed up with the contest MC and then had an hour or so to kill before it started, which they did handily with the bar's trademark on-tap mojitos, and with pinball machines themed around Star Wars (original 70s flavor) and Indiana Jones. Frankie seemed more or less back to his usual self, but Penny was still glad for the drinks. Even with the social lubricant he had time to wonder, a little: how much of a luck component _was_ there to this kind of deal? After all, electronics malfunctioned. Injuries happened. Would some kind of horrible accident happen to one of their opponents? Would it happen to Penny? Somehow neither of those things seemed like anything Frankie, in particular, would consider _lucky_ —and that's what counted, right? Frankie's point of view, and Penny's? Penny leaned on the console for a while and watched Frankie, flicking his right-hand flipper so the ball slid into the side-channel and climbed up toward the Death Star, then—lost momentum _just_ before it would have made contact. 

__

"Fuck," said Penny, "the left, hit the left—" and then the MC started clanging some kind of cow bell over in the contest area, so Luke and Han were forgotten. 

__

It turned out, thought Penny, later, through the haze of more mojitos and yelling-laughter, that he hadn't needed to worry. He wasn't used to having ideas that worked out so well, so it was kind of a shock when no catastrophe hit; but after a while it all sort of blended together into a long, comfortable pillow of time. A place where he could start to relax, a little, leaning against the wall sipping his drink and heckling good-naturedly as Frankie—who'd plainly Danced Danced a Revolution before, no doubt about it, visited a retro arcade on the regular—leveled up again and again, holding the back bar like the local kids did so his feet could move more dextrously. This was going to work out all right, Penny'd remember thinking. He'd managed to salvage the night—him, Penny Adiyodi, curse notwithstanding—and it was a relieved and a happy thought but it was kind of a bittersweet one, too, remembering all the times Miriam and Eswari and Julia had done the same for him. 

__

Penny and Frankie both made it through the first cut of the tournament, and the second. During Penny's first two turns he was hitting just perfectly that balance of liquor-loose and fine-focused, still coordinated enough to get his feet on board with his concentration but relaxed enough not to overthink it. Nothing short-circuited in the machine, and no mysterious bonuses happened either. Frankie yelled for him and he yelled for Frankie, who was finally eliminated on the third round. Penny squeaked through, along with a pencil-thin mulleted Asian kid in black jeans, a fatter Asian kid with glasses and a bleach-tipped Fauxhawk, and a white chick with a platinum dye job who wore her DES MOINES TO THE DEATH OF ME t-shirt knotted over her leopard leggings. Frankie was grinning; Penny could feel he was too. Everything felt so _chill_ and easy; he sipped off the fresh drink Frankie was holding for him as they went into the fourth round. After which—somehow—it was down to just Fauxhawk and Penny, the crowd gathering to watch the finals. Good luck couldn't improve a nice canoe or win you a dance tournament, but bad luck could totally fuck one over for you: with all those eyes on him Penny expected to at least twist an ankle. But Frankie came around the side of the console and stood right behind him as he played, almost but not quite touching Penny's hands on the bar behind him, and Penny played through; he even did pretty well. He still lost to Fauxhawk, but it was a fair loss: no catastrophe at all. Coming down off the platform, he put his arm around Frankie's shoulders, and nothing happened then either. It was all fine. 

__

Flushed from their miraculously unremarkable defeats they wove across the parking lot, stopping for a styrofoam container of BBQ ribs and another of Szechuan noodles. They ate with plastic forks, standing up, as scattered snowflakes settled on their faces and shoulders. The bottle blonde from the tournament, bundled up in scarf and bomber jacket for a smoke break, came over to commiserate with Penny about the unbeatable Fauxhawk—turned out she'd taken second place to him last year, at what was apparently an annual tradition. 

__

"Y'all got close, though," she said. "That was respectable. I'm not bitter."

__

"I think you're maybe a little bit bitter," Penny said, and she laughed, and scrunched up her nose, and said, "Well, maybe a little." 

__

She stubbed out her cigarette butt on the ground and when she turned around and said, "Merry Christmas," gesturing vaguely with her flask, Penny and Frankie said, "Merry Christmas" back, in unison, and Penny found that he, too, felt only a little bit bitter about that. 

__

Greasy and a little soberer they kept on across the lot to the music venue, where a bluegrass band was starting up a setlist of countrified Christmas tunes. The space was unheated but still surprisingly warm, Penny thought: standing in the packed room, sipping craft beer to dueling "Jingle Bells" banjos, and then a rockin' "Joy to the World," followed by a rendition of "Beautiful Star of Bethlehem" that started out with a single stark vocalist on the first verse and then swelled, gradually, instrument by instrument, into a full, rollicking complement. More and more people packed into the venue, and it warmed up; felt almost toasty, people holding their winter coats over their arms. 

__

After the first set, the vocalist and most of the musicians went on break, but the guitarist and the fiddle player stayed on stage, pointing into the audience at folks they recognized and goading them into come up onstage, turning the show into a kind of live Christmas karaoke. "Lisa!" the fiddle player shouted. "I see you, I know you want to!" and Lisa, groaning, would stomp up to the little stage, sheepish and grinning, as her friends hooted at her from the middle of the crowd. After Lisa Mullet-and-Black-Jeans, from the dance contest, showed back up for a wildly inebriated country version of "White Christmas," and a trio of girls in flannel, who might be sisters or girlfriends, made "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" into almost like a slapstick vaudeville routine, complete with synchronized choreography. 

__

"They practiced this," Frankie said, as Blue-and-White-Flannel mimed tripping Red-and-White-Flannel in such a way that she fell right into the arms of Red-and-Green-Flannel. 

__

"For sure," Penny said, laughing. "No way they're just coming up with it right now." 

__

As soon as he said it he wondered if they were so good because they'd done it last year, and the year before—it was all part of this thing, wasn't it, that he could sense all around him, in the atmosphere; the way the whole room felt like a group of folks who knew each other, who were coming together again in an expected way. Maybe the flannel ladies had fine-tuned their act for years. Certainly it seemed like the audience was expecting it: hooting and clapping sometimes even before the visual punchlines landed. 

__

And Penny—Penny didn't hate any of it. Not right that moment. Not the Christmas music, or the politely oblivious gentrifying patrons, or being stranded in Kentucky. He elbowed Frankie in the side, and Frankie elbowed him back; and then Frankie dragged Penny onstage for a kind of embarrassing and below-standard but in no way disastrous "Frosty the Snowman" that turned into an excuse for the fiddle player to show off her impressive chops. Frankie and Penny both bowed to her, when it was over; and then the rest of the band was back on stage and the two of them stumbled back out into the cold air, where the snow was falling a little heavier now, and got a gingerbread bear to share while they waited for their car to come pick them up. 

__

Frankie was handsy in the Lyft and Penny didn't mind. He wanted him to be: wanted the warmth and fellow-feeling and the free, open, _easy_ quality of the night to keep going and going so put his hands on Frankie when Frankie put his hands on him; put his mouth on Frankie's neck and burrowed fingers under his shirt, and the beers and mojitos and the laughing-singing and good food eaten in the snow-fresh air had made him mellow enough that he could decide not to worry about it and the decision stuck. Humming, face to warm shoulder. Frankie's window was just cracked, and the cold air on their exposed skin made them that much hotter in all the places where they touched. Faces; hands. Lips. 

__

Back in their room Penny was still just buzzed enough to keep things loose; hazy; a little like a movie montage: Frankie laughing against him, shaking them both. Biting his shoulder and Penny biting him back: fastening teeth around beard and pulling: a dog playing tug with a rope. Frankie pulling Penny's scarf aside to get his mouth on skin and just as Penny—inhaled, sharp—then blowing a raspberry against Penny's chest while "You fucker," Penny was saying, the both of them bubbling up with laughter. Frankie in a headlock, elbowing Penny in the gut. Frankie with one hand down the front of Penny's jeans, the other groping his ass, Penny looking down at his hand just going off at the mouth, _Yeah, come on, faster, fuck, you want me to come all over your hand, you want me to—_ until Frankie, laughing at him, not careful, nipped at his mouth so Penny bit back. Penny licked and—bit, and crowded him—back, and back, for once not being careful, either. Nothing would happen if they were in balance and it was like—it was like he could feel it, he was starting to be able to feel it, the two of them rising to meet each other at the same rate with the same pressure so they balanced each other perfectly. It was like this rope pulled taught between the two of them; like leaning back against someone leaning back against you; so for once he didn't have to think: _a bookcase is gonna fall on me; the room will catch fire; the floor will open up and we'll fall into a lost vault of pirate gold_. He could just— _sink_ into it, not hold rigid but melt down, soak down into kissing Frankie whose soft warm mouth and throat made noises against Penny's mouth that were lightly mocking but not mean. It seemed like there was nothing mean about any of it at all.

__

Frankie's knees hit the mattress and he managed a halfway graceful transition to sitting while Penny half-fell over him, banging his knee on the bedframe and ending up kneeling next to—but, he thought. That wouldn't be a problem. Would it. He looked up at Frankie panting down at him, already flushed and sweaty and somehow wearing nothing but his socks and his boxer shorts even though Penny still had most of his clothes on, his shirt unbuttoned hanging off his shoulders and his jeans open at the fly, tugged just halfway down his ass. Penny grinned; sat back on his heels and lifted Frankie's left foot into his lap. Frankie's breath picked up. Penny slid fingers under the fabric of his sock; skinned the thing off and Frankie's breath picked up more. Thumbs dug into his arch and he was moaning. Mouth open; eyes wide open; Penny put his left foot back on the floor and picked up the right. Dug in his fingertips: calf; ankle; peeled Frankie's sock off with his bent thumbs while his fingers pressed into heel—arch—"Shit," Frankie said, "yeah," and Penny felt his grin go even wider as he shifted his hips—his knees—to get himself close enough to press the sole of Frankie's foot against his own dick. 

__

Frankie _groaned_. 

__

"Yeah?" Penny said, and he was he one now with that mocking note in his voice, laughing a little breathless as he hitched his hips, rubbing off against Frankie's foot because the guy was fucking coming apart at the _seams_. "That working for you?" he said, though the answer could literally not have been more obvious: Frankie's eyes rolling back in his head and his hard, flushed-red cock leaking against the underside of his belly, Jesus. 

__

"Fuck," Frankie said. "Yeah, I—fuck, do it—more—harder—"; which Penny could do, for sure, but—

__

"Where'd we," Penny said, surprised how out of breath _he_ sounded, "the lube, where'd we put the lube." 

__

And Frankie actually had to reach for it: stretch out his arm to an uncomfortable-looking length to reach where they'd put it on the bedside table; it didn't happen to roll against them right at that moment or anything, and for like four seconds Frankie's foot had to break contact with Penny's cock; and that meant something, thought Penny, vaguely; that was another sign they were still—synced up, weren't they, despite Frankie panting so hard he was practically hyperventilating, his luck wasn't totally swamping what was going on with Penny's as Penny watched his own hands pouring lube over Frankie's feet—the left foot and then the right foot too, since Frankie was holding it out to him, knees bent and outward-rotated slightly, with his hands behind him on the bed holding up his weight so he could watch Penny sliding his cock between his soles. 

__

"Jesus fuck," Frankie said. "Oh fuck, dude, yeah, come on, oh god"; and Penny wanted to laugh but he also wanted to—fuck, he didn't know where to look, Frankie panting through his open mouth with his cock untouched getting redder and harder and _wetter_ , Jesus, it looked _painful_ and he was fucking forward with his hips like there was anything at all touching him as he just—stared, just fucking stared at the tip of Penny's dick thrusting forward through the slick narrow space between his soles and then dragging _back_ and Frankie's arms were trembling, he was trembling; he was gasping and trembling like he wouldn't be able to hold himself up much longer, like he would lose it, explode, come for minutes with nothing touching him at all above the ankle just from—just from watching—just from watching Penny fucking his fucking—feet—

__

Penny pushed Frankie's feet together when he came; palms hugging the outsides of his bridges to tighten the arches down around him, messy, _hot_ ; curling his torso over his hands and his calves and Frankie's feet, gasping-groaning; head bowed so far it almost touched Frankie's knees as Frankie cursed and vibrated above him. 

__

And Penny couldn't. Quite. Get his breath after. He uncrossed his eyes and for balance put out his hand not—not on Frankie's calves covered now in his own come but on—a knee, fuck; a thigh; Frankie still vibrating under his hands, still gasping, his swollen dick just. God. Right there. His thighs falling open his mouth open groaning and— _right there_ , Penny thought, still dizzy, hand closing around it as he moved up Frankie's body.

__

"You want, again?" he said. Frankie's dick twitched. Drooled. "You want me to suck you again?" 

__

Frankie groaned, _loud_ , loud enough and deep enough Penny felt it all through his shoulders and his back, hoarse and desperate-sounding. Penny was already opening his watering mouth, could _taste_ him but—

__

"No," Frankie said. "No, I—shit, I— _shit_ , fuck—"

__

"Hey man," Penny said, swallowing, closing his teeth with a click as Frankie— _fumbled_ , he was fumbling, like he didn't know quite what to say or how to say it, which—Penny might be able to peg as _lucky_ or _unlucky_ or _meaningful_ somehow if he could think past the fog in his own head but he couldn't. "It's cool," he told him, "that's cool, you want—?" sliding his slick hand back up, behind his balls. 

__

" _Yes_ ," Frankie said. Fair enough, Penny thought: dude knows what he likes, and crawled up Frankie's body, warm skin fur sweat, until the bed could take his weight and he could bite at Frankie's chest while twisting his fingers into Frankie drag _out_ , twist _in_ , as Frankie groaned and panted and rubbed his filthy feet all over Penny's legs until he came. 

__

Two minutes afterward, the woman in the next room over knocked on their door with a bag of doughnut holes she didn't want. Which maybe meant Frankie was feeling more of something than Penny was feeling of anything. But faced with an offer of late-night sugar, Penny didn't feel like trying too hard to figure it out; and he definitely didn't feel like arguing. Instead they wrapped up in the duvet and opened the window; and passed a joint back and forth between them while their throats got sticky and their hands and faces coated themselves in powdered sugar. Outside it was snowing again, just slightly, which couldn't help but seem like some kind of thumbs-up from the universe. 

__

"This has been—good," Penny said. Wiping his hands on the sheets. "I didn't expect—it's actually been kind of _fun_."

__

"Thanks, man," said Frankie. "That's a real compliment. I'm glad the two orgasms you've had today have been 'actually kind of fun'." Penny had to lean back to get enough distance that he could whack him, lightly, on the side of his head.

__

"You know what I mean," he said. Next to him, he could feel Frankie soften. 

__

"Yeah," he said. "It's been good, we're—it's been good, being together." 

__

Penny leant back against the back of the window-seat; pulled the duvet closer around him and took a drag on the joint, and then looked up, aimless, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling. From the three currently-switched-on lamps around the room—two by the bed, one by the window—asymmetrical shadows stretched out across it, folding and dividing around each other. The shapes they made looked—well. Kind of sinister, honestly. Haunted-house material for sure. But they also reminded him of things like… stars. Wings. At some point during the day, he saw, someone had been up to patch the ceiling. Clear away the wrecked chandelier and all the plaster shit. 

__

"People say—'the holidays,' right," he said. Frankie didn't answer, but Penny could feel his attention: still humming along, right next to him, under his skin. "The winter _holidays_ , the pie chart of like—ninety percent Christmas stuff you can't get away from if you try, five percent lip service to Hanukkah—"

__

"One percent we heard one time there's something called Kwanzaa—"

__

"Right, like two percent the solstice or whatever, I guess you have to factor New Year's in, too, I don't know what percent we're up to but the point is—obviously it doesn't apply to everything but a lot of that stuff, people talk about light in the darkness. You know? Bringing light to the darkness." 

__

"Sure," Frankie said. He cleared his throat; took the joint from Penny and took a hit, then leaned over to blow out the window. Cold air trickled down Penny's arm where Frankie'd pulled away; then he leaned back in and Penny was warm again. Frankie leaned his shoulder in: a little bump, not looking at him. "They should talk about bringing darkness to the light, too," he said. 

__

"Yeah?" Penny cut him a glance but Frankie was fiddling with the duvet, his arms exposed to the cold. "At the summer solstice, or—?"

__

"Whenever," Frankie said, and then: "Hey," dragging his eyes up to Penny's face: "you should move in with me." 

__

Penny—his brain just—

__

" _What_?" he said. "Move _where_?"

__

"Move in with me. When we both get back to New York." 

__

"Dude," Penny said. "What the fuck." 

__

"Come on," Frankie said. "It'd be great." And now that he'd launched himself on this bananas idea it seemed like he was going all-in, because he'd turned on the window-sill, rotating his body so he was facing Penny, meeting Penny's eyes with this earnestness that had a weird desperate quality about it, and what—Penny was too tired, too stoned, had let his guard down too much to think back over where exactly they had to have gotten so catastrophically on the wrong page with each other that this could be happening right now. He'd thought—but the sex had never stopped feeling fun; casual; hot, yeah, even comforting, companionable, _real_ but. But the dance contest and the singalong, their feet crunching through crisp snow through the woods, none of it had felt like—like promising anything, or. It was _two days_ ; did Frankie think—was Frankie—

__

"It makes _sense_ ," Frankie was saying, as Penny gawped like a goldfish mashed into an electrical socket. "We were just saying, like—it's so cool when we're together. How many times do you meet a person who's your exact—opposite? Complement? Whatever the fuck, man. We only got started on experimenting with what our shit can do together; learn how to control it. Steer it. Whatever."

__

"That—I can _visit_ ," Penny spluttered. "I don't have to—w-what do you think, I'm just going to disappear as soon as we get back to the city? Like I'm never going to call or text or visit, if I'm not living in your—fucking—penthouse or palace or whatever you've got going—"

__

"It _is_ a penthouse," Frankie said, barrelling over him, "yeah. Okay? There's no reason to be stupid about it, or like— _coy_ ; I have all this extra space I'm not using. I'm not asking you to—you'd have your own room, or whatever; you could have your own fucking _suite_ if that's what you want. You could work if you wanted—"

__

"I could _work_ if I _wanted_?" 

__

"I don't know, dude, you haven't even mentioned what you do; it didn't seem like you were exactly passionate about it. Plenty of people would like to quit their jobs."

__

"Plenty of—who am I, Anna Nicole Smith?"

__

"The point is," Frankie said, "you could do whatever you wanted. And we could keep experimenting, you know. With what we could do, with—shut up, listen to me—with the combination of our magic. It's an _opportunity_. You've _gotta_ see that. I mean—goddamn, dude, it hardly ever even occurs to me to say this, but: it's some kind of crazy luck that you and me would even meet. I don't want to have it be this one weekend and that's it. And this way, with me close by, nothing too horrifically fucked-up is going to happen to you and I won't have to stress that you got like an anvil dropped on you or—or got thrown in jail because you looked like a bank robber, or—"

__

But Penny's brain kind of. Fuzzed out. 

__

Frankie was talking, still. Packing in as many words as possible before Penny could interrupt him again but Penny couldn't—quite. Hear. _Nothing too horrifically fucked-up is going to happen to you_ , he thought, numbly: when nothing even _had_. Had it. Not in the past two days; not really. So a plane'd had to make an unplanned landing: it wasn't like it'd crashed. Even if Penny _had_ had to sleep in the Lexington airport for a few nights: at least there'd be a roof over his head. At least he had a credit card and unlimited access to the bar and the Dunkin' Donuts. It wasn't like he'd have been freezing in the streets, or starving. This was nothing, he thought: _nothing_ ; not anything like the shit Julia'd put up with just being near him. The bed bugs, and the termites; that fucking subway accident when they'd both thought for sure they were about to die. And then, not six months later, coming home from a weekend away to find all her clothes and her books and her family photo albums lost to the house fire. The grim, twitchy shake of her head when he'd tried to reach out and touch her, and she'd shrugged him off: _No_ , she'd said, _don't, it doesn't matter, we won't have to live like this. We'll fix it. I can fix it._ What had _Frankie_ seen, to compare with that? A guy who didn't like Monty Python? An unexpected vacation destination, and a shared room? Even Julia hadn't suggested that Penny just—what, never leave the house; or only leave it when she was with him; just stay in the apartment concentrating on containing his, whatever, _contagion_ , or. Even—that time, he remembered, back in Gainesville, when he'd opened a door and seen Eswari sobbing, Miriam's arm around her waist and Miriam's calm voice telling her she'd done enough, she'd done all she could do, she'd looked everywhere, she couldn't keep beating herself up about it, as Eswari choked out _It's not— _right_ , there _must_ be a cure, he can't— _live_ like this, our baby boy, he can't—we can't let him live like this_—but they had. They had, because they fucking _had to_ , didn't they; you couldn't lock your kid up in his room and keep him there at sixteen and eighteen and twenty-four; he'd seen what it cost them but they'd helped him pack up his old Honda hatchback with all his stuff and drive north to New York. Knowing what he was. Knowing what was likely in store for him but knowing they couldn't stand between him and it forever, could they, between him and every stupid unfair fucked-up thing that would try to happen to him and probably succeed. Between him and his own stupid reactions, stupid phases, stupid risks. Because you couldn't just _decide_ that shit for another person, could you, not your kid, not your lover, you couldn't just up and say: your car's gonna break down and your plane's gonna crash and your subway car's gonna derail so no traveling for you, Adiyodi; no cheeseburgers, or showing your face unchaperoned in public; no going to the gym or skipping gym day; no befriending anyone with a heart condition or visiting a children's hospital or going down on a—

__

"That's what was up with you just now," he said, "wasn't it," cutting right over Frankie who was still going strong on all the amazing rationales he'd developed for why Penny should feel good about moving into the home laboratory of some asshole he'd met two days ago, in order to live under constant surveillance conditions. " _That's_ what you—"

__

"Huh?" said Frankie. "Up with me when?"

__

"When I offered to blow you—for the second fucking time today, by the way—" 

__

"Look," said Frankie, but his face had like—closed in on itself; shut something away behind the surface of it; and Penny could tell, he could fucking _tell_ that he was right. 

__

"No," Penny said. "You thought—you _wanted_ it, you wanted me to and I was offering, but even though you'd already let me once you thought—what? I'm such a trainwreck I'd find a way to catch something from the world's luckiest man?" 

__

"Well excuse me for taking fucking responsibility for sexual hygiene, asshole, it's—"

__

"Not something that bothered you this afternoon, was it?" said Penny, who was—standing up, somehow, naked in front of the bed, disentangled from the duvet; bare feet on the hardwood and he was trembling all over but not from the cold. "You didn't stop me this afternoon, you didn't even ask if I had a condom, you—"

__

"You took me by surprise!"

__

"No," Penny said. "Or if I did, that's not the point; the point is _you_ just hadn't started in yet on this whole freakout of having to actually think about what it's like, living a normal life like a normal person, where not every fucking thing goes your way, and bad shit happens, and you have to _feel_ things about the bad shit that is happening or could happen to you, or your lovers, or every other fucking person you love or hate or met in the fucking street, Frankie, and the fact that you're out of touch with this extremely common aspect of everyday life is _not my responsibility_ , dude."

__

"I was _looking out for you_ ," Frankie said, and if he wasn't shouting he was definitely at least talking at a louder pitch than a person usually heard from the guy, which was fucking— _something_ , at least.

__

"You were trying to make my decisions for me," Penny said. "And if my moms don't get to do that and my fiancée didn't get to do that, then you definitely don't get to do it, so just—take your fuck-off expensive Manhattan loft and shove it up your ass, man. I'm not gonna _live_ with you just so you can keep feeling like nothing bad ever happens to anyone who matters."

__

Penny hadn't been so conscious of them breathing hard when they'd been fucking. Well, the room hadn't seemed so quiet, otherwise. And he hadn't been shaking so much. And Frankie hadn't been looking at him with that kind of disgusted, pissed-off attention. Well. Good, thought Penny. Better he gets out now. Spare himself the mess. Eventually Frankie broke eye contact; unwound the duvet and put his hand out for the clothes they'd flung off, heedless, in the happy buzzed communion of the earlier night. His own t-shirt was, of course, the first thing to hand: he didn't even have to look down. 

__

"Good to know you throw a whole tantrum when a partner requests safer sex practices," Frankie said, pulling his t-shirt back on, and then turning over in the bed, showing Penny his back. 

__

"Oh, fuck you," Penny told him. He shoved at Frankie's shoulder grabbing the second pillow, and then stomped off to spend the remaining probably two hours of the night on the fussy little loveseat under the window. 

__

The next morning was Christmas. For whatever that was worth.

__

The coastal weather systems had cleared; planes were landing again and taking off. Penny didn't end up sleeping basically at all, but at least that meant he was up before Frankie. He got downstairs early enough that he missed even Suzanne: just slinging his duffel onto his back and walking a couple miles toward town before pausing long enough to summon a ride-share. He didn't know who he was kidding, or who he thought he could avoid: Frankie'd be on the same rescheduled flight as he would, after all. With Penny's luck, it'd be the flight out all over again, with that jerk in the next seat treating the whole plane to Eric fucking Idle. 

__

Frankie wasn't there, though. He didn't pass in Roger's truck as Penny was walking along the highway; and he wasn't in line at security. During the hour or more when Penny sat at the gate, bouncing his leg with his earbuds in, Frankie didn't show up there, either. Eventually Penny's stomach growled, and he'd arrived so early he still had almost an hour until boarding, so. A breakfast burrito at the cantina. He sat at one of the little plastic tables, watching the crowds pass by over the little half-wall divider: the harried families lugging wheelie bags, kids with their _Frozen_ and _Spiderman_ backpacks. He chewed and swallowed; chewed and swallowed; and thought he was watching pretty carefully but Frankie still somehow managed to sneak up behind him; take him by surprise when he dropped Penny's scarf on the table. 

__

"Thought you'd want it," Frankie said.

__

Penny looked up at him; looked at the scarf. He wiped egg off his fingers and stuffed the thing into his bag. Like he'd really need it in Southern California. 

__

"Thanks," he said. Not looking at him. The awkwardness stretched out between them and suddenly the rest of Penny's burrito seemed like way too much to ask of any reasonable human being; he hadn't _felt_ hungover until now. Out in the concourse a man walked past with a service dog: black lab, smiling and smiling and smiling. 

__

Penny sighed. "Look," he said. "Could you just, like, I don't know, get yourself upgraded to first class, or—"

__

"I'm not going to LA," Frankie said. 

__

"—get this plane and I'll get the next one, it's just—what? Sorry?"

__

"I'm not going to LA." Frankie shrugged, his face blank. Maybe he hadn't slept much either, Penny thought.

__

"Oh," he said. And then: "Did you, uh, miss your Disneyland dates? Were they fixed? That was probably me, my—fault, my thing." 

__

"Nah," Frankie said. "Just not in the mood. Headed back to New York. I can hang with some friends. Get ready for the party, you know."

__

"Damn," Penny said. 

__

Frankie shifted his bag on his shoulder, standing awkwardly in the aisle between cantina tables. In the seats behind him a couple of moms were packing up their diaper bag and their backpacks, one of them wearing a baby and the other holding the hand of a toddler, and Penny had a sudden flash of Skyping, months ago, with Eswari and Miriam about how he'd be spending his break, nervous he'd be disappointing them by not coming home to Florida even though they'd always made a point of not celebrating Secular Capitalist Christmas. _Next semester is gonna kick my ass_ , he'd told them, _plus wedding planning, and with Jules's research it'll be the last time before the wedding when we can just—_ and he would have gone on, he'd had a whole little speech worked out, but right then Miriam, choked up, cut in to say they were just so _happy_ for him, for Julia, for both of them but especially for him, that he could be happy, their darling boy. _Also_ , Eswari'd said, _The Barbaras have invited us to spend the winter break in Lascaux, looking at cave paintings_ ; and Penny had thrown back his head and laughed. Miriam had giggled too, in a watery way. 

__

He'd have to break the news to them, he thought now, exhausted. They'd call, probably, not today but sometime in the next few (what time was it in France? in England?), and he would have to explain, and disappoint them. And now he wouldn't have the plane ride to work things out with Frankie, still standing in front of him in his ratty shorts, with his bag over one shoulder. Penny hadn't particularly realized he'd been planning on that. Counting on it, even. But. Here they were.

__

"Well," he said. "Enjoy New York then, I guess"; and Frankie took half a step back, like Penny had pushed him.

__

"Yeah," Frankie said. "Yeah man. Knock yourself out in LA." 

__

And he turned and walked out of the cantina. Penny watched him go. Halfway down the concourse toward the east-bound flights, a set of colored lights went off when Frankie passed a Sunglass Hut kiosk, and a man ran out and dove toward him, hand out to shake Frankie's, grinning all the time: Frankie'd won something. A pair of sunglasses, most likely. _More use in California than New York_ , Penny thought, biting the inside of his mouth, and there was a moment there when he fully expected Frankie to turn around; to take the glasses as a sign he should fly west after all; where he thought Frankie would get back on the people-mover and off at the cantina and say—something, whatever, _sorry I was a controlling weirdo_ , or _actually, some sunshine sounds perfect about now_. 

__

But as it turned out he didn't even look back. Just shook his head, and gave the guy back his shades; and headed off toward the East Coast departures. 

__

So Penny flew out to LA alone. The plane was packed; they had to gate-check his carry-on, and he was stuffed into a middle seat between a squirmy kid and a woman with a winter cold, but he was so exhausted he managed to sleep most of the way anyway with just earplugs and an eye mask. At LAX they'd lost his bag, so what else was new: he had a couple changes of clothes in his carry-on, and it wasn't like you couldn't buy shampoo pretty much wherever. He left the address and room number of his hotel, then sat in a ride-share in near-gridlock for 45 minutes on I-405, and then 20 on I-10. 

__

"It's like one in the afternoon," he said, to no one in particular; his driver tsked. Shook her head.

__

"The traffic _is_ normally a little chiller on actual Christmas," she said. "But with the storms and everything… bad luck for you, trying to start your vacation."

__

On the Santa Monica boardwalk he stumbled out of the car and into the hotel he and Julia had booked together, months ago: eight nights in an ocean-side room, his part of which had taken most of his savings but her part of which she'd done casually, without, as far as he could tell, a second thought. It did feel like a deeply inappropriate place to be unhappy, what with the bright sunny seventy degrees; the bougie black-and-white lounge chairs by the kidney-shaped pool; the tastefully-landscaped rooftop bar. The big old ocean that was insufficiently choppy or briny to be _his_ ocean, but which was still reassuring, somehow. Penny dumped his bag on the floor between the huge white bed and the huge white jacuzzi, and slouched out onto the street.

__

Down on the pier it could've been any day of the year: people milling around with hair in their eyes; kids with big foam swords and fried dough; grownups in Route 66 ball caps and sweatshirts with palm trees. Couples and families waiting on line for the Ferris wheel, the drone of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from the carousel. Scattered surfers in wetsuits in the water; sparse crowds milling around on the beach. Penny got a coffee from the Pier Burger and took three sips from it before a woman trying for a panorama shot on her phone backed up into him and spilled it down the front of his shirt. 

__

"No worries, don't worry about it," he told her; thinking how if Julia were here she'd be stone-faced, checking where her math went wrong, looking disappointed about having to get out the spare shirt she'd have packed for him in her bag. If Frankie were here they'd probably have scored the coffee for free, and churros to go with it. 

__

As it was he didn't bother with another shirt, or another cup. Just stuffed his shoes in his bag and headed down onto the beach itself. Right under the pier a little crowd milled around, but a couple minutes threading his way through them and he was—not alone, by any stretch, but had enough space to himself that he didn't need to worry about bumping into anyone, and he could look up at the haze over the mountains, or down at the waves lapping sand around his ankles as he kicked his way through the surprisingly frigid surf. 

__

It was kind of mesmerizing. After the snowy woods and the caroling in Lexington he felt like he'd stepped through some kind of portal: the sun warming his back and his head, and sparkling off the white foam and the water. It was weirdly freeing, just taking a walk on the beach. With his back to the pier there weren't even any decorations that he could see. No one beating him over the head with the insistence on family togetherness and buying shit. _Good idea there, Jules_ , he thought, and felt—well, sad, fuck, practically bent in half by sadness; and also just—so tender toward her. Toward both of them. How hard they'd tried. How fierce she'd been for him, for so long; and how grateful he'd used to be. It'd never been _easy_ , not like with Frankie. They'd never been— _friends_ , and he couldn't really imagine them being friends now: the togetherness of the two of them had always been too high-stakes for that. And thinking back, now, there must have been a point when he'd stopped—wanting his life to be like that, he guessed; when had it been? When had he started feeling exhausted by it, or—or like rather than this thing with Julia being the life raft he was clinging to all the time to keep his head above water, instead it was the weight that was pulling him under? Anyway that wash of tenderness had used to happen to him every day. He remembered, suddenly, how it'd used to be. But he couldn't remember the last time he'd thought about Julia and felt like that, like he just had: no seething resentment, no impotent throwing himself against the wall that'd gone up between them. Just tenderness, and sadness; and the hope that she was okay. 

__

It was like she'd heard him. She could sometimes do that, even lately; but he hadn't expected—but when his phone vibrated in his pocket as he was looking up at the glass-fronted vacation rentals that took the place of the beach volleyball and open-fronted surf restaurants as you got further from the pier, he fished it out and looked at the screen: _Julia_. He hit _Accept Call_ , but for a second he couldn't make his voice do much of anything.

__

"...Penny?" she said; and it was so odd, and at the same time so familiar, to be walking along this chilly, sunny stretch of California coast with her voice in his ear. He could hear the surprise in his own voice when he made himself say "Hey"; and he knew she would bristle. 

__

"Come on," Julia said. "What, I was just—never going to contact you again, when you—"

__

"Hey," he said, again. "It's good to hear your voice." 

__

In the short silence between them a black, curly-haired dog raced past him in the surf, colliding madly with his leg and then careening off, chasing off a flock of gulls. He smiled to see it at the same time he could feel her softening, all the way on the other side of the world. 

__

"Sorry," she said. "I'm—sorry about the timing on all this, I wouldn't—I didn't want to end with us mad at each other. I didn't mean to leave you with a trip planned and a plane ticket to get rid of."

__

"Didn't get rid of it," Penny told her.

__

"What?" She laughed, a little. "You—you're in Santa Monica right now?" 

__

"Hold on," he said. Took the phone away from his ear and switched it to speaker, then held it out toward the wide blue Pacific. No gull happened by to caw or whatever. He wondered if she could still hear the sound of the surf. "The ocean herself," he said, when he'd taken the phone off speaker. "It's good to be back on the coast. A coast. Even if there are _mountains_ all over here."

__

He'd put a nose-wrinkle into his voice about the mountains; it was—had been—a running joke-fight between them, Florida Man versus New England WASP. Over the phone he didn't hear her laugh or anything, but there was a little space for her smile. 

__

"That's—I'm glad," Julia said. She cleared her throat. "You, um. So you got there without any trouble, then." 

__

Penny laughed. A girl in Spandex ran past, barefoot with leg-weights on, and a training backpack. "Got stranded in Lexington, actually," Penny said. "All flights grounded for two days. Plus I was massively hungover so I puked on the way down. But that was no one's fault but my own." 

__

Julia shifted, on the other side of the line. It must be hard, he thought: she hated to pass up evidence, and for two years this kind of shit had all been data points to be captured. He could feel the litany of questions she'd always put him through, welling up in her like an over-full bladder. _Time elapsed from the first instance of bad luck to the culminating incident?_ she would have said, because her longest-standing theory had involved modelling his _episodes_ on a complicated wave formation. So she would ask about trajectories of intensification and he'd have to think back to what the _first instance_ had even been, putting aside his self-inflicted headache and nausea. Did it count that three Lyft drivers had turned down his request before one had agreed to take him to the airport? If not, then—being served the wrong drink. _2:55pm_ , he remembered, and the hollow bitterness that had flooded him, when he'd caught himself making the note, and realized she wouldn't be around to ask. Old habits. 

__

"Fuck," Julia said, at last. "Two days in—what, a Motel 6?" 

__

And Penny didn't answer for a second because it just—it hit him. All just washed over him, tsunami-style, that—the _whole thing_ with Frankie. Old habits, man: that shit would be like crack to Jules. A person whose _good_ luck counteracted Penny's bad? That alone would be enough to get her back to the States, even just to figure out how it worked from a technical point of view. And then, on top of that, there were all the more complicated ways he and Frankie'd found to combine their two magics. _The mechanism by which the luck element interacts with emotion_ , he could hear her saying, _both relative and absolute; the intensification and diminution of effect—_ and she'd be off. He could picture it, clear as anything, even if he wasn't sure which model she'd start with. Gravity? Electromagnetics? He could tell her about it, and he was one hundred percent certain she'd get on a plane. Fuck England; she'd come back to him. She'd hunt down Frankie and get him on board, take Columbia up on the offer Penny knew they'd made her, slot herself back into his life like she'd never left. For a second there a whole panorama stretched out in front of him; made him weak with relief at what it would be like: having her back. And then the vision—receded. And he was just standing there on the sand, clear-eyed. Looking at the haze over the mountains. 

__

"Nah," he said. "All the motels were full. I just camped out in the airport." 

__

"For two _days_?" 

__

"You're thinking about showers," Penny said, and Julia made kind of a spluttering noise but she didn't argue: they both knew she was thinking about showers. "Anyway," he said. "Their cantina there is actually not half bad. Moderately okay steak fajitas."

__

"Oh, high praise," she said. "I'll be sure to order them the next time I'm in—where was it again? Lexington?"

__

"You'll be neither impressed nor offended." 

__

"Okay," she said, laughing. "I look forward to that, thanks for the tip, swee—Penny." 

__

The silence creaked. Stretched, and settled. He breathed out, long and careful, watching an egret pick its way through the shallow surf: its stick legs and its long, sinuous neck. 

__

"How's Oxford?" he said, at last; and she was silent a second longer and then: "Amazing," she said, and he smiled; and the conversation lumbered back into gear. 

__

They talked for another ten, fifteen minutes; and after they hung up Penny walked for a long time. Sometimes there were tears on his face, and sometimes there weren't; the great thing about the ocean was, there seemed less difference between the two than in other places. He kept going until the beach got too rocky to walk on, and then he climbed up a little embankment to keep walking, on the pavement now, up a hill that just kept climbing. At the top of the cliff was a seafood joint with a full bar: the doorman told him he'd walked all the way to Malibu. In the late afternoon the view was amazing, and the drinks were cold. 

__

He and Julia would have had six more nights on the reservation, pre-paid and everything; and although he'd thought it would fuck with him too hard, Penny surprised himself by staying through all of them. He ordered room service; left his phone charging on the nightstand while he went out for a couple bottles of overpriced local Cab and then sat out on his balcony, which he was oddly okay with not being _their_ balcony, drinking it out of a plastic cup so as not to tempt fate, and watching the ocean and the joggers and rollerbladers scooting past on the paved walk. The sun set but for a long time he didn't come inside; just huddled into his throw blanket in the cold air, watching the stars over the water.

__

After that first afternoon on the beach he honestly wasn't conscious of thinking about anything in particular. He didn't try to do much; didn't _want_ much, really, and because he didn't, nothing too horrible happened to him. He twisted his knee getting out of the shower, and had to buy tourist crap from the shops on the pier so he didn't have to keep wearing his coffee-stained shirt while he waited for his luggage to show up; but that was all low-grade hassle. Hardly even registered as bad luck. He loaded a couple mediocre crime novels onto his phone; took a few more walks on the beach; went out for some crazy expensive meals that Julia would have critiqued and Frankie would have calmly accepted as his due, but which Penny just thought—they tasted fucking good. And it was kind of peaceful, eating salmon and tourist-watching alone in the dim salty seaside light. He didn't even talk to many people, other than waiters in restaurants—and, of course, Eswari and Miriam, when they finally got around to calling him from France. He slept nine hours a night, and didn't remember his dreams. 

__

Behind it all, though, he guessed things were kind of—percolating. Because when he woke up on the morning of the last day, he had this like— _moment of clarity_ , fully formed, in his head, of what he wanted to do. 

__

It was _so_ fully formed, actually, that he didn't even really need to obsess on it. The whole day—checking out of his hotel, back to LAX, security, the gate, boarding—he felt weirdly calm. Almost bored, but in a way that was kind of pleasant. On the plane he finished the last crime novel he'd downloaded, then took a nap with his head wedged against the window-wall. He woke up to night: the lights of Newark twinkling underneath him. Even the dirty snow along I-9 felt weirdly welcoming. His driver was quiet and his phone battery was low; so he just softened his eyes; gazed out the window as the highway crossed the Passaic and the Hackensack and then, after sitting in traffic through Jersey City, the Hudson. 

__

Frankie's place was right on Bleecker Street, in the heart of the East Village. You had to walk up six flights, which didn't seem particularly lucky to Penny while he was doing it, but he understood when he got there: the whole top floor of the brownstone had been knocked together into one giant loft. This kind of space just didn't _exist_ in Manhattan—and maybe it actually didn't, Penny thought, as a blue-haired, model-gorgeous Black woman opened the door for him and led him through a press of bodies. Probably Frankie'd had the inside magically expanded beyond the edges of the building itself. Actually—probably the previous owner had already done it, and Frankie'd just lucked into inheriting the spell. 

__

Not shockingly, the guy threw a great party. There seemed to be a '70s theme: Penny made his way through a crush of boys in campy leather gear and girls in sequined go-go mini-dresses to the sounds of the DJ's frankly amazing live remix of the Staple Singers's "I'll Take You There." There were edibles shaped like VW Beetles, and a games room with an arched, hand-lettered sign over the door that said _T W I S T E R_. There were servers dressed like Patty Hearst, working the crowd with trays of Tequila Sunrises and Singapore Slings. There were, of course, disco balls. 

__

Frankie—surrounded by a group including Wonder Woman, The Fonz, and, because someone was confused about which Pam Grier movies actually came out in which decade, Jackie Brown—had come as Mr. T. He had commitment, Penny thought: he'd shaved for it, sides of his head included, and he had all the gold chains going on and everything. He was laughing; they were all laughing; Frankie's eyes squeezed shut with how hilarious whatever it was had been and Penny had just a second of thinking: _I've made a mistake_ ; but when Frankie opened them again and saw him, his hand came up in a wave, gesturing Penny to wait. And not to wait long, either: Frankie clapped Linda and Henry on the shoulders, leaned in close to make his excuses to them over the music, and then headed over to Penny, all his gold glinting in the spinning disco light. 

__

"Hey," Penny said, when Frankie got close enough to hear. 

__

"Hey," Frankie said, "you made it": his face transparently fucking radiant as he went in for a hug and then—stopped. Stepped back, which Penny—got, he did. But it was horrible, and also beside the point, so he stepped forward in Frankie's place, to make up the difference. Pulled Frankie into a big old bear hug and Frankie hugged him back. Squeezed. Forget parties, Penny thought: the guy's real strength was giving the best ever hugs. 

__

"I'm sorry I freaked you out, man," Frankie said, against Penny's neck.

__

"Can we talk?" Penny said, and he felt Frankie nod. He took Penny's hand and led him through the throng, the party really heating up now that they were coming up on the ball drop. They squeezed back to the apartment entrance, Frankie grabbing a jacket on his way out the front door, then turned to the left and went up some more stairs that Penny hadn't noticed when he'd come in. At the top, cold air came through the rooftop door when Frankie opened it. 

__

They weren't _that_ high up, but there was still something, wasn't there, about a rooftop view in Manhattan. All the lights from the streetlamps and the cabs and cars and the storefront glows, and there they were, hovering above it. Other revellers were scattered here and there on other rooftops, and since this neighborhood was still more or less one height, Penny and Frankie could wave to them and they could wave back. 

__

"I'm surprised more people aren't up here already," Penny said, and Frankie shrugged. 

__

"It usually won't open for anyone but me," he said. "It takes a lucky touch."

__

"I see, I see how it is." 

__

Frankie smiled, and then stopped smiling. He looked ridiculous in his regular everyday winter parka but still with the Mr. T hair and the gold peeking out of the center zipper. It was incredibly endearing. Penny sighed. 

__

"Look," Penny said. "There are things I'm sorry about and things I'm really not, okay. I'm not—I just got out of this long thing with Julia where the whole point of us together was that she was going to fix me, protect me, and I'm just—I don't want that again. I don't want it with you and I realized I. Don't want it with her." 

__

He swallowed. Looked out at the rooftop across from them, where a woman in platform wedges seemed to be teaching two friends how to dance the Funky Chicken. Frankie came up beside him; followed his gaze and laughed; then checked himself. 

__

"No," Penny said, "it's fine, it's—hilarious."

__

"And impressive," said Frankie. "Look at those shoes."

__

Penny wiped at his eyes; the salt itched his face. They stood there a few seconds longer, watching the woman flap and kick, and jut her chin. 

__

"I thought—I really thought I was okay with it, with Julia. That I wanted that with her," Penny said. "But I don't, I don't; I want—I have to be able to live my life, Frankie. I can't be following Julia's prescriptions, or shut up protected in your— _huge_ , by the way, and also beautiful—apartment. I have to be my own person, figure out how to be the way I am even if that means, you know." He laughed. "Fucked-up horrific shit sometimes happens to me! It's true; you do not even know the half of it." 

__

He took a deep breath.

__

"So—I don't know if you can be cool with that," he said. "Like—that's on you, whether you can make your peace; I get it if you can't. But what was so great, about hanging with you in Lexington. Was it was like—how we were together, and how you are alone: they're not the _same_ as how I am when we're together, and how I am alone. But they're tied to it. They help me understand it and they help me understand something bigger than it, and I think being around me helps you understand both those things from your own side, too. And I just. _Like_ you, Frankie. I like you, and I think being— _friends_ with you, or— _whatever_ , would be." He laughed, awkwardly. "Fun. I think it would be a lot of fun. So if you can reconcile yourself to me living in a regular old shared apartment out in Queens, where probably bad shit will happen to me sometimes and I'll have to deal with it or ask you to help me deal with it, or ask other people to help with that, then. I'd like us to keep hanging out sometimes. So." He spread his hands. "Let me know."

__

Frankie took Penny's hand. The cuff of his parka brushed Penny's wrist. He still had all these chunky gold rings; Penny laughed, and shook his head. His fingers between the rings were warm, and soft. 

__

"Yeah," Frankie said, in a low voice. "I can do that."

__

"Yeah?" said Penny. 

__

"Yeah man," Frankie said. "It'll be good for me. I've got. Whatever. The capacity for growth and change." Penny laughed, and loosened his hand from Frankie's hand to sling an arm around his shoulder. He turned his head; kissed briefly the shaved patch of scalp on the side of Frankie's head. He was always so warm, Penny thought. Even on a rooftop, in December, not wearing a hat. 

__

"And it'd be a waste, wouldn't it?" Frankie went on. "Not to see where it went."

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"I think so," Penny said. "But—I do get it, if it's too much. Going from all smooth sailing all the time to a symbiotic soul-buddy who's literally cursed is a lot to deal with; just—let me know, all right?" 

__

Over on the other roof, one of the dance students flapped too hard, threw her balance off and fell over. Penny chuckled, and Frankie, like he'd been waiting to hear it, squeezed tight around Penny's waist. 

__

"That's fair," he said; and then: "well. If you've got any interest in—I think we've got Pink Ladies? Harvey Wallbangers?"

__

"I'd be into one of those cookies shaped like Jaws," Penny said. "Or—do they have some kind of designer drug in them? I'm honestly just kind of hungry."

__

"They," Frankie said, slapping him on the back, and turning them both back toward the door and the warm and the swell of voices and Al Green, "are sea-salt shortbread, with maple icing. You, my friend, are in luck."

__


End file.
